Volunteers help preserve ancient Tibetan art
We bring volunteers to the Tibetan plateau where they join an international team working to conserve endangered works of Buddhist art. Supervised by expert conservators, they are assigned simple repetitive tasks such as cleaning dirt from the surface of a painting. From this work, the volunteers acquire a much greater appreciation for the skill of the original artists. Staying in a village for a week or more allows the visitor to acquire a profound sense of the rhythm of life in a Tibetan village.
About You
Contact Information
Title
Dr.
First name
Pamela
Last name
Logan
Your job title
President
Name of your organization
Kham Aid Foundation
Organization type
NGO
Annual budget/currency
US$200,000
Mailing address
900 WIlshire Blvd Suite 1210, Los Angeles, CA
Telephone number
626 449-7505
Postal/Zip Code
90017
Country
United States
Website
Email address
Alternative email address
Your idea
This will be the address used to plot your entry on the map.
Street Address
Upper Pusarong Village
City
Pusarong Township
State/Province
Kangding County
Postal/Zip Code
Sichuan
Country
China
Geotourism Challenge Addressed by Entrant
Quality of tourist experience and educational benefit to tourists .
Organization size
Small (1 to 100 employees)
Indicate sector in which you principally work
Conservation/Preservation organization
Year innovation began
2007
Place your video embed code here from YouTube, Google Video and other video sharing websites. How to embed a video from YouTube.
Paste your code here
Indicate sector in which you principally work
History.
Name Your Project
Volunteers help preserve ancient Tibetan art
Describe Your Idea
We bring volunteers to the Tibetan plateau where they join an international team working to conserve endangered works of Buddhist art. Supervised by expert conservators, they are assigned simple repetitive tasks such as cleaning dirt from the surface of a painting. From this work, the volunteers acquire a much greater appreciation for the skill of the original artists. Staying in a village for a week or more allows the visitor to acquire a profound sense of the rhythm of life in a Tibetan village.
Innovation
What is the goal of your innovation? Please describe in one sentence the kind of impact, change, or reform your approach is intended to achieve.
Tourists get to know Tibetan culture working side by side with Tibetans to preserve their Buddhist art.
Please write an overview of your project. Include how your approach supports or embodies geotourism or destination stewardship. This text will appear when people scroll over the icon for your entry on the map located on the competition homepage.
We bring volunteers to the Tibetan plateau where they join an international team working to conserve endangered works of Buddhist art. Supervised by expert conservators, they are assigned simple repetitive tasks such as cleaning dirt from the surface of a painting. From this work, the volunteers acquire a much greater appreciation for the skill of the original artists. Staying in a village for a week or more allows the visitor to acquire a profound sense of the rhythm of life in a Tibetan village.
Explain in detail why your approach is innovative
Our project is innovative because it is a rare opportunity to perform hands-on work preserving rare and beautiful Buddhist paintings in Tibet. The work is meditative yet social, and after a few days together the sense of common purpose transcends cultural and linguistic barriers. Volunteers meet and interact with Tibetans in an environment of shared purpose and on a level playing field. This is much different from the usual tourist experience where visitors rarely have a chance to even get to know local people, and there is a large imbalance of power and authority.
Impact
Describe the degree of success you have had to date. How do you measure, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the impact on sustainability or enhancement of local culture, environment, heritage, or aesthetics? How has it transformed or contributed to the power of place or demonstrated the sustainability of tourism? How does your approach minimize negative impacts?
We have run one trip and it was a great success - both in the quality of the travelers' experiences and in the very real help that they contributed to the overall conservation effort. It also helped the village better understand what they need to do if they want to make money by hosting foreign tourists in their homes - what we like to eat and do, what expectations we have,
In what ways are local residents actively involved in your work, including participation and community input? How has the community responded to or benefited from your approach?
We hire 10-12 villagers as conservation apprentices and they work on the paintings for 10-20 weeks - much longer than the visitors work. The villagers become much more expert in the conservation process and they come to appreciate the importance of protecting their cultural heritage. When the foreign visitors are present, we also hire villagers to prepare meals and provide lodging.
How does your program promote traveler enthusiasm, satisfaction, and engagement with the locale?
As described earlier, the visitors become thoroughly engaged with the host village by working side by side with villagers during an extended stay.
Describe how your work helps travelers and local residents better understand the value of the area's cultural and natural heritage, and educates them on local environmental issues.
When you spend a day cleaning a few square inches of painting, you have a long time to meditate on the thoughts of the artist who put that painting there. You have a long time to consider the centuries that have passed since the original artist did his work and today when you are doing yours, and to wrap your mind around the generations that have lived and died in that time. When you stay in one village for a week, you also see your environmental impact on that village. It becomes apparent that there is nowhere for garbage to go, and you begin to think twice about consuming food treats that leave wrappings and litter behind. When you see the hard work it is to carry water from the village tap to each home, and the fuel needed to heat that water, you begin to realize that bathing is a rluxury and to forgive Tibetans for their untidy habits.
This Entry is about (Issues)
Sustainability
How is your initiative currently financed? If available, provide information on your finances and organization that could help others. Please list: Annual budget, annual revenue generated, size of part-time, full-time and volunteer staff.
We pursue grants to pay for the major expenses of the project. Our total budget for Pusarong Temple is about $200,000, and this should pay for most of the needed preservation work but it won't cover all of the retouching needed to fill in lost bits of painting. We have two full time staff in the field office, and 3 part-time volunteers in the U.S. From each group of 10 volunteers the revenue is about $20,000.
Is your initiative financially and organizationally sustainable? If not, what is required to make it so? Is there a potential demand for your innovation?
If we had a large number of paying volunteers, we would be less dependent on grants and it would be easier to keep the project going. The challenge is to expand our outreach so we can find more people. The demand is there but it's difficult to serve the needs of the travelers simultaneously with serving the needs of the project. For example, many travelers need to have hot showers available, and would like to schedule their trip at their convenience - which doesn't always match our campaign schedule.
What are the main barriers you encounter in managing, implementing, or replicating your innovation? What barriers keep your program from having greater impact?
Of course, funding is our main barrier. There is also a limit to the number of significant wall paintings worthy of conservation, however the work goes so slowly that right now there is no worry that we'll run out.
What is your plan to expand or further develop your approach? Please indicate where/how you would like to grow or enhance your innovation, or have others do so.
Next time we would like to run 2 or 3 groups back to back, instead of just one.
The Story
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers' marketing material.
Pamela Logan has an aerospace PhD from Stanford, worked at NASA and taught at UCLA. In 1989 she won a grant to investigate the warrior tribes of Kham (eastern Tibet). She has published two books about the eastern Tibetan plateau and many articles and photos. In 1996 Dr. Logan was named Woman Explorer of the Year by the Scientific Exploration Society. In 1997 she started Kham Aid Foundation to pursue cultural heritage preservation projects, and later expanded the Foundation's work to include education, health, disaster relief, and economic development. One recent accomplishment is a new project to rescue the Minyak language, spoken by about 10,000 Tibteans, from oblivion by teaching it to schoolchildren.
What is the origin of your innovation? Tell the Changemakers and media communities what prompted you to start this initiative.
Having managed several wall paintings conservation projects, I realized that a great deal of work can be done by people with very little training, and I also realized that the opportunity to join such projects would be of great interest to many people who care about Tibetan culture.
Describe some unique tourist experiences that your approach provides. Be specific; give illustrative examples.
The volunteers work side by side with Tibetans, sharing tools and materials, often taking meals together. One wonderful experience is to hear Tibetans sing while they work. Another is to be in one village for an extended people and get to know the village's daily rhythm - the women rising early, mash fed to the young calves, animals driven to the fields to graze, the hard work of running a farm. It's great when you reach the point, after a hard day's work, of truly looking forward to that cup of butter tea at day's end. When you get to know the names of prominent villagers - who's the headman, who's the party secretary, who's the richest man in town, which woman has two husbands, and whose wife ran out on him, leaving him to raise children alone - then you feel like more than a visitor, you feel you've become a citizen.
What types of partnerships or professional development would be most beneficial in spreading your innovation?
We'd love to partner with a conservation materials supply company who can provide chemicals, cleaning supplies, pigments, and so on at a discount. This project also very much lends itself to documentary filmmaking.
| Attachment | Size |
|---|---|
| DSCN4257.JPG | 199.03 KB |
 | 147 weeks agoBihamba Jemimah said: On July 1, 2009 the judges reviewed the entries for the Changemakers “Geotourism Challenge 2009: Power of Place Sustaining the Future of ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 157 weeks agoDana Frasz said: Dear Dr.Logan, I enjoyed reading your entry. Do you have any strategies as to how could you expand your network of ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 158 weeks agoPam Logan submitted this idea. |
