Sausage out of Soya-Paste

The process of making vegetarian sausage is all about learning not to waste food. Tenzin Jamtsho, one of the LME students in this video tells us, how to make vegetarian sausage out of soya bean paste. Soya-Paste is the primary ingredient besides flour and other spices. After extracting the soya milk for tofu, the soya paste becomes waste. So, Jamtsho takes this opportunity not to waste the nutritious paste but turn it into delicious sausage. The sausage is shared with all the monks at Chokyi Gyatso Institute during mealtime.

LME Curriculum Review Meeting

A group, consisting of Dasho Pema Tinley, former vice-chancellor of Royal University of Bhutan (RUB); Dr Sonam Chuki, a curriculum developer with Royal Education Council (REC); Uma, the project manager of Kanishka School in Dzongsar Khyentse Chokyi Lodro Institute (DKCLI), Bir; Dasho Neten Zangmo, former Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative (SJI) Executive Director; Ms Jackie Mitchell, curriculum developer of LME; Dr Yang Gyeltshen, curriculum developer of LME; Lamas, khenpos, and lopons of Chokyi Gyatso Institute (CGI); Passang Lham Dorji, one of the Board members of Lhomon Society (LMS); and Samdrup Jongkhar Initiative (SJI) staff came together at CGI, Dewathang from 8^th – 15^th of May 2019 to review LME curriculum units.

The review meeting was organized into two phases. Phase one was five days of thorough reading and rationalizing of the LME Curriculum Framework and all the nineteen thematic units, which LME has developed and implemented with the monks of CGI in the LME program. There was an in-depth discussion on each of these units to bring in critical feedback and comments from the members and to include their wider experiences in the curriculum. The feedback and comments were recorded by the LME team in order that they can be integrated into the units by the end of June 2019.

The second phase included a one-day outreach program for local officials and two days of long-term planning for LME. The outreach program for local officials saw the participation of the Thromde Education Officer (TEO), principal of Samdrup Jongkhar Middle School, and teachers of Dewathang Primary School and Early Childhood Care and Development (ECCD), Samdrup Jongkhar Thromde. The program was to share about Lhomon Education’s approach to alternative education and to discuss possible collaboration with the local education organization. It was also to learn from each other’s experiences through discussion and critical feedback.

The two days long term planning included discussion about collaboration and coördination, development of material resources and facilities, and professional and human resources development.

Launch of Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning (SEEL)

Lhomon Education (LME) is fortunate to observe the Global Launch of the Social, Emotional and Ethical Learning (SEEL) program. The launch of this milestone event from 4^th – 6^th April 2019 at Andaz Hotel, Aerocity, New Delhi, India is in an effort to make this world more peaceful through education. The program is presided over by Nobel Peace Laureate and Emory University Presidential Distinguished Professor, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This special event also saw children’s rights activist and Nobel Peace Laureate Kailash Satyarthi along with globally recognized experts in social and emotional learning Dr Daniel Goleman, Dr Kimberly Schonert-Reichl, and Dr Robert Roeser.

The culmination of more than two decades of educational collaboration between His Holiness and Emory University, the launch of the SEE Learning program saw an invited audience of several hundred educators and policy leaders from 35 countries around the world.

The SEE learning education approach enshrines the values of compassion, respect, inner peace, human dignity, empathy, warm-heartedness, a genuine sense of concern for others in the vision of prosperity and progress.

Speaking about the program to hundreds of delegates, His Holiness said, The main reason for the introduction of SEE Learning is that the existing education system does not guarantee happiness. Children from kindergarten should be taught about basic human values, which are grounded in common sense, common experience, and scientific evidence. Education should include ways to reinforce warm-heartedness from kindergarten upwards. We need education to strengthen inner values not just pursue material goals. We need to introduce steps towards emotional hygiene, as much as we teach physical hygiene. This way we can address some of the problems we face, in the hope of making this a century of non-violence. We are social animals—anger pushes us apart, but compassion brings us together. It’s such a shame that our wonderful human intelligence is squandered on developing and then marketing weapons that can only be used for destruction.

Lhomon Education curriculum aims to engage the heart and mind and to develop long-lasting skills that aim to educate the whole person to be a decent human being. Therefore, the SEE Learning program is very compatible as the program aims to educate the Heart and mind with a research-based approach. Compassion-based ethics, also known as secular ethics explicitly values and promotes an orientation toward kindness and compassion. This holistic approach that seeks to cultivate, alongside the traditional academic subject, a benevolent and ethical mindset in the basic human values reconfirmed LME’s approach to education in fulfilling Khyentse Rinpoche’s vision for Bhutan and beyond.