TWA President espouses young, educated Tibetan women to join and serve
DHARAMSALA, 10 Sept: The president of Tibetan Women’s Association (TWA) encouraged young and educated Tibetan women to spearhead the movement forward on the rock-solid foundations at the organisation’s 35th anniversary of its re-establishment in exile.
“The founding members of the Tibetan Women’s Association, though they lacked education, established a strong foundation for the organisation, the young and educated Tibetan women should now come and shoulder the responsibility to spearhead the movement forward,” The TWA President said at it’s commemorative event attended by the President of the Tibetan Nuns Project, Nangsa Choedon as the Chief Guest and Tibetan Settlement Officer (TSO) of Dharamsala, Kunga Tsering as the Special Guest.
The TWA President further described ‘empowering Tibetan women’ as the organisation’s biggest successes and achievement while taking pride in celebrating the 35th year of its reestablishment in exile in India.
Nangsa Choedon in her key address congratulated TWA on its 35th anniversary and lauded the organization for its contributions and services to the community in every field.
The former Secretary of Central Tibetan Administration called on the primary non-governmental women’s association in exile to march forward with the same grit with more dedication and determination with a holistic; all-encompassing approach.
“As woman accounts for 50% of the Tibetan population, the result and output should reflect it,” she concluded.
The TSO of Dharamsala in his address spoke about how the leadership was filled with men during the World Wars and cold war and encouraged Tibetan women to take more responsibility to make 21st century, the century of peace and dialogue as advocated by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
The TWA renewed its pledge to work towards educating and empowering our younger generation and proposed to create a safer space in Tibetan community as a whole and women in particular on issues based on gender and domestic violence by educating the public and providing legal aids in their press release.
The organisation said that it has trained and carved path for over 400 young educated Tibetan women from universities and workforce, trained over 145 young Tibetan women through their tailoring center since 1995, offered Tibetan nuns the opportunity to to participate and engage in the nun’s empowerment and leadership training that has benefited 350 nuns from different nunneries in India and Nepal besides providing incentives to selected Tibetan families with more than 3 children to encourage the Tibetan population growth in exile.
The statement also called for the unity of the Tibetans and reiterated TWA’s firm stand on the Middle Way Approach’ as proposed and asserted by His Holiness the 14Dalai Lama persistently insist the Chinese leaders to re-start the dialogue on Tibet’s issues with the representatives of the Central Tibetan Administration in exile, without further delay.
The organisation was founded on March 12, 1959 in Tibet when Tibetan women gathered together in their thousands to protest against the illegal occupation of their homeland in Lhasa after the Tibetan National Uprising. The organisation was then re-established on September 10, 1984 in exile. TWA now has 58 Regional Chapters and 17,000 members across the world.
