Girlpower Camp
The 2020 girlpower camp was as usual, a huge success. We had about 20 girls attending, and the 6 Snowland girls teaching. Fun was had by all, in addition to the learning aspect.
As every year, the mainfocus is art and crafts, but also, we have English, baking, speakers, inspirational movies, women’s healthand hygiene and games. This is one of our favorite Snowland projects, as it empowers and encourages not only the Snowland school girls, but allows for outreach into the community, building a network ofgirls who encourage and support each other.
Going Green
GOING GREEN is a brand new project, still in its very beginning stages, in which we plan to work with several local businesses to upcycle as much glass and plastic as possible. This will be given to Snowland artists to wash and paint, then the plan is to sell the resulting artworks and put the money towards purchasing water filtration for the hotels, coffee shops and restaurants involved.
We hope in this way to cut down on plastic water bottles in the garbage. This project has been temporarily shelved by COVID but we hope to revive it when Tenzin Dolma returns.
The Pieta Pet Project
The Pieta pet project is another new plan to involve the Snowland artists in using their art talent to fundraise to help others, in this case, several animal shelters in various places in China. What we did last fall was to take commissions for pet portraits and crafts, and give a percentage to animal shelters to help with vet bills, vaccinations etc for rescued animals. This too, is currently shelved until the school is back to normal from the COVID disruption.
2020 Graduation
2020 graduation of our two senior students: Sonam Gyamtso and Dorje Tsering. Our yearly graduation party on Oct 15 had to be postponed due to COVID, but will be held when Tenzin Dolma returns. Both boys successfully completed the 5 year course and have moved on to the next stage in their careers.
Gyamtso has just moved to Xining, and is engaged to another Snowland student Kulha, who graduated the year before. They are beginning a small studio project of their own. Dorje has moved to Repgong, where he plans to study under another talented artist for a few years before branching out on his own.
We are very proud of all our graduates and these two are no exception!
COVID
School news due to the COVID pandemic, Tenzin Dolma has been stranded in Canada since what was supposed to be a 3 week visit during the spring festival in January. She left the day after the annual “ Girlpower camp” was concluded,and has been unable to return. She has been teaching via wechat, checking the art progress daily, as well as holding 3 art classes a week, and 1 art history class every Sunday morning. So things continue despite the inconvenience, but the sooner she is able to return the better.