Lingshed Area Hostel, Leh

Solar panels in action! (July 2008)

Finished washrooms (July 2008)

The Lingshed Area Children's Hostel

updated August 19th 2008

The Juniper Trust has successfully raised over $36,000 to keep this chidlren's home from home open throughout the harsh winters and build new washrooms using the latest sustainable technolgies.

The Lingshed Area Children's Hostel provides a home from home for around forty children from one of this region's most remote villages so that they can receive a good education at schools in Leh.

The hostel aims to support the health, well-being, happiness and development of children through a caring team of staff and basic accommodation and amenities. The Juniper Trust is helping through capital investment in sustainable buildings and facilities, some ongoing maintenance support and through building the capacity of the hostel team to better manage and improve the hostel themselves.

Why a hostel?

Lingshed village is in one of the most remote areas of northern India. People live very simply as subsistence farmers with scant access to basic services such as education and health care. Over the past decade the community has determined to improve their quality of life and saw the education of young people as a way to understand and gain some of the benefits of the modern world. To do this their children needed to attend good quality schools through to secondary level, only available in Leh. The problem however is that to reach Leh, the children have to trek for over a week, crossing several high mountain passes. In winter the journey is particularly hazardous as they have to trek along the frozen Zanskar River with temperatures as low as -30 degrees celsius. The answer was to build a hostel near Leh to provide basic accommodation and care for the children to attend school, whilst supporting traditional Buddhist practice and cultural traditions. This was achieved through the support of the people of Lingshed village, the Lingshed Monastery and the drive of Sonam Dorje, a Lingshed official who has successfully raised funds from a variety of sources for the set up and development of the hostel.

The hostel is laid out over two floors, the upper story having just been completed this autumn. thanks to donations from a Belgian organisation www.tibet.be. The upper floor has sleeping rooms and a large corridor used for prayers and self-study. Some of the sleeping rooms are bare, except for mats for 3-5 children and their box of belongings, some have metal bunk beds.

a sleeping room

On the lower floor there is a communal room used for prayers, eating, study, play and anything and everything else! The admin office has now moved upstairs to the new floor and the space downstairs converted to more sleeping rooms with some simple furniture. Downstairs there's also a kitchen with basic equipment.

There was no place for children to sleep separately when they are sick, no washroom or bathing facilities, nowhere for visiting parents to stay, no quiet study room and no running water. Water came from a nearby canal where children and helpers wash and collect water for use in the hostel  (drinking water was shipped in from Leh). There is a traditional toilet outside the building and the gardens are just starting to be cultivated for flowers and vegetables.

The hostel runs on a bare minimum of functional resources and equipment. Investment is needed in kitchen and dining room and equipment, furniture (beds, tables, chairs, cupboards), a TV and radio, play equipment, games and toys and educational resources to aid self-study.

Phase 1 of the JT support, in conjunction with KE Adventure Travel, was to donate $4000 to enable the Hostel in Leh to remain open last winter (2007/8). The money was spent so far on basic food stuffs, pens and notebooks, some medicines, tuition for those students unable to return home in the school holiday and kerosene for heating. Heating has been by far the biggest cost which is one of the reasons we intend to work with the hostel to improve their sustainability in the next phases.

Phase 2 in the spring/summer of 2008, is to raise $32,000 to provide the installation of a water bore and pump, solar panel units and converter, upgrade of electrics and to build a separate washing block.