How the Project began
What the project is about and how it all started.

The Contributors
The people who originally contributed funds to the Project.

The Project Revitalised
After 6 years the Project was finally kick started.

How the Project will work
Obviously describing how the whole interaction will proceed.

The Project Setup
The communication with Tibetan Aid to choose a Tibetan child to sponsor.

The Project in Action
The pictures, information and comunnication that is exchanged between the sponsored child and the ozmac community.

Following, in chronological order, are the the communications between Tibetan Aid nad the ozmac community:-

Web form submitted, 20th February, 2005:-

Here is the text from the form once submitted on the Tibet Aid website:-

<begin>

Thank you for deciding to sponsor a Tibetan monk, nun, elder, or child.

As the next step in sponsorship, we request that we connect by telephone, if possible. We will use the telephone number you have supplied, or if you prefer, please call us (toll-free at 1-877-TIBET-AID or direct at 1-845-679-6973). We generally reply to sponsors from outside the United States by email.

After answering any questions you may have, we will send you the information you need to initiate the sponsorship and to correspond with the individual you are sponsoring.

Please note that we cannot process contributions for sponsorships online; to make your sponsorship contribution(s) by credit card, please contact us by telephone (toll-free at 1-877-TIBET-AID or direct at 1-845-679-6973) or by email (sponsor@tibetaid.org) for further information.

We deeply appreciate your decision to assist Tibet and the Tibetan people through sponsorship.

<end>

Email received, 22nd February, 2005:-

Hello, Ken Guntar!
Thank you for offering to sponsor a child through the Tibetan Children's
Villages Project! Your sponsorship provides for the child's basic needs in
the refugee community and a traditional Tibetan education.

Most sponsors donating in another currency do so by credit card, as the
credit card companies convert automatically to your local currency. We ask
that you authorize these charges on a quarterly schedule (i.e., $90.00 US
every three months) in order to minimize banking and administrative costs.
Making contributions on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis using an
international money order is another option.

Before we initiate this sponsorship, could we ask that you please confirm
that you would like us to select a child for you?

Please also feel free to contact us (email sponsor@tibetaid.org; telephone
+1 845-679-6973) with any questions you may have about the process of
sponsorship.

We deeply appreciate your decision to assist the people of Tibet through
this sponsorship.

Sincerely,
Kathy

Kathy Fusho Nolan
Executive Director
Tibet Aid
1-845-679-6973
sponsor@tibetaid.org

Our reply, 22nd February 2005:-

At 11:57 AM -0500 22/2/05, Tibet Aid wrote:
"Thank you for offering to sponsor a child through the Tibetan Children's
Villages Project! Your sponsorship provides for the child's basic needs in
the refugee community and a traditional Tibetan education."

Actually it is not just myself that is doing the sponsoring. A number of people from an online cyber community based in Australia are doing the sponsorship. I initiated the idea and will be facilitating it.

"Most sponsors donating in another currency do so by credit card, as the
credit card companies convert automatically to your local currency. We ask
that you authorize these charges on a quarterly schedule (i.e., $90.00 US
every three months) in order to minimize banking and administrative costs.
Making contributions on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis using an
international money order is another option."

I don't have a credit card at present so I would look at a quarterly payment by money order initially.

"Before we initiate this sponsorship, could we ask that you please confirm
that you would like us to select a child for you?"

Is there somewhere where I can look? If not - it doesn't really matter but I would prefer to sponsor a girl.

"Please also feel free to contact us (email sponsor@tibetaid.org; telephone
+1 845-679-6973) with any questions you may have about the process of
sponsorship."

Would just like to know what the procedure is as I (we) are new to this. We also would like to get it started as soon as possible. We have some further ideas that I would like to present to you - but I would like to know what the procedure is first.

" We deeply appreciate your decision to assist the people of Tibet through
this sponsorship."

I look forward to the day when Tibet is free once more!
tashi dalek!
Ken

Email received, 23rd February 2005:-
(for security reasons I have placed ZZZZ in 2 areas of the email)

Hi, Ken!

Excellent on all counts! We are happy to arrange a sponsorship for your
cyber community and appreciate your serving as the contact person and
facilitator.

You can view biographies and photographs of children at the Tibetan
Children's Villages who need sponsorship by using the passcode "ZZZZ" from
our entry page (http://www.tibetaid.org/ZZZZZZZ.html). We also
have an 11 year-old girl, Kunga Tsephel, whose father is in ill-health and
has taken on debts, who is a high priority for sponsorship, but whose
photograph and biography have not yet been posted to the web.

Based on your ASCII Ribbon Campaign, I am copying below (rather than
attaching!) a document that describes the steps involved in initiating a
sponsorship. Once you identify a child you wish to sponsor, we'll send you
information regarding where to send your contributions and how to correspond
with the child. When we receive your initial contribution, we send you the
child's original photograph and biography.

We try to make everything as simple and straightforward as possible -- and
we continue refining the process as we go along!

Many tashi delek!
Gratefully,
Kathy
Tibet Aid

STEPS TO SPONSOR A CHILD

1. Choose an appropriate Sponsorship Program:

a. Yong Ling Creche Kindergarten (YLC)

· Program Description: Sponsored Tibetan children receive a pre-school
education at Yong Ling Creche Kindergarten in Dharamsala, India. The funds
are sent to the school in the form of a scholarship for a needy child.
· Sponsorship Requested Contributions of $3.50/month (payable for the
year at $42). Sponsors provide scholarships for children in need but are
not assigned an individual child.

b. Department of Education (DOE)

· Program Description: Support of School Age Boys & Girls. Many Tibetan
children living in exile are in need of support in order to attend school
(in some cases boarding schools); some children are orphaned.
· Sponsorship Requested Contribution $20/month -- a child can attend a
Tibetan residential school, receive books, uniforms and room and board. The
poorest and most needy children are carefully selected for sponsorship.
Annual progress reports and personal information about the sponsored child
are sent to the sponsor, and correspondence is encouraged.

c. Tibetan Children's Villages (TCV)

· Program Description: The Tibetan Children's Villages (TCV) provide an
integrated community for care and education of orphans, semi-orphans and
destitute children in exile. During the day children attend school, located
in each of the Villages. His Holiness the Dalai Lama proposed in 1960 that
such centers be established to care for the many Tibetan refugee children.
The Home Office of the Tibetan Children's Villages is located in Dharamsala,
India, and has over 11,000 children under its care, with additional villages
across India. TCV is a member of SOS Kinderdorf International, Vienna,
Austria.
· Sponsorship Requested Contribution $30/month: All of the contribution
goes to support the child's basic needs. Food $9, Housing $9, Medical $3,
Educational expense $8, Miscellaneous $1. A biography and photograph of the
sponsored child are provided to the sponsor, and correspondence is
encouraged.

d. GarGon Village Project

· Program Description: The GarGon Village Project provides sponsorship
support for children at the GarGon Elementary School in Tibet. Children
receive clothing, meals, and a modern education, including a Tibetan
curriculum. Because of the remote location, correspondence is hand-carried
to the village approximately once a year.
· Sponsorship Requested Contribution $20/month: Sponsorship is $20 a
month. Each sponsor receives a photograph of the sponsored child plus the
opportunity to correspond and visit.

2. If sponsoring through the Department of Education, Tibetan Children’s
Villages, or GarGon Village Project, please choose an individual child (or
leave this choice to our staff at Tibet Aid).

3. Fill out the online sponsorship form (www.tibetaid.org/sponsorship.html),
or contact us by email (sponsor@tibetaid.org) or telephone (1-845-679-6973
or toll-free 1-877-TIBET-AID).

4. Receive instructions for donating your sponsorship funds via check, money
order, or credit card (Visa, MasterCard, or American Express).

5. After your first sponsorship donation has been processed, Tibet Aid will
forward to you a drawing from the children at Yong Ling Creche kindergarten,
a photograph of children sponsored at the GarGon School, or the original
picture and biography of children sponsored through the Department of
Education or the Tibetan Children’s Villages.

For further information about these programs, please contact
Tibet Aid
Tibetan Sponsorship Project
34 Tinker Street, Woodstock NY 12498
(845) 679-6973
sponsor@tibetaid.org
or visit our web site: www.tibetaid.org

Our reply, 24th February 2005:-

Hi Kathy,

At 11:14 AM -0500 23/2/05, Tibet Aid wrote:
>Hi, Ken!
>Excellent on all counts! We are happy to arrange a sponsorship for your
>cyber community and appreciate your serving as the contact person and
>facilitator.

Good :) This is an experiment. The community is an IRC channel called #macintosh on the IRC network called irc.oz.org. I do not know of any other online community that has done this. If it proves successful it may inspire other online communities to do the same. Rest assured however, that if, for whatever reason, the #macintosh community does not continue the sponsorship after a year I will carry it on myself.

>You can view biographies and photographs of children at the Tibetan
>Children's Villages who need sponsorship by using the passcode "ZZZZ" from
>our entry page (http://www.tibetaid.org/ZZZZ.html). We also
>have an 11 year-old girl, Kunga Tsephel, whose father is in ill-health and
>has taken on debts, who is a high priority for sponsorship, but whose
>photograph and biography have not yet been posted to the web.

I am interested in seeing the details for Kunga before I make the decision. I have looked at the page indicated and I wish we could sponsor them all :( I was particularly drawn to Lobsang Dolma so once I see the details for Kunga Tsephel I will make the choice. It will be one of the two. I will probably put both photos and short bios on the #macintosh website and see what they think.

>Based on your ASCII Ribbon Campaign, I am copying below (rather than
>attaching!) a document that describes the steps involved in initiating a
>sponsorship.

You can send me the Word (?) doc if you like and I can convert it to PDF for you if you wish - I would be more than happy to do so. Although our community is based around Macintosh computers many of us are experienced with different platforms. If you are using Windows there is an excellent FREE office suite that is MS-Office compatible. It has many features that take it beyond the capability of MS-Office one of which is that it can create PDF documents directly from within the program. It is called OpenOffice and you can download it for free from http://www.openoffice.org - but they don't have a Tibetan language version yet!

>Once you identify a child you wish to sponsor, we'll send you
>information regarding where to send your contributions and how to correspond
>with the child. When we receive your initial contribution, we send you the
>child's original photograph and biography.

Are gifts allowed to be sent? If one of our members (or group of members) decide to visit - can the child and her family be visited? Some members of our community may wish to do one or the other or both.

>We try to make everything as simple and straightforward as possible -- and
>we continue refining the process as we go along!

It seems straight forward to me. I have a final question though. Would there be any objection to placing the photo, biography, correspondence, etc. on #macintosh's website?

Take care!

Ken

Email received, 2nd March, 2005:-

Hi, Ken.

Thanks for your enthusiasm on this! Let me start with your last question
first and see if I can address the specific points you raise.

1) Can you post the photograph, biography, and correspondence to the
#macintosh's site? Yes, after the sponsorship is established, if the child
you sponsor (and family, if a younger child) also gives his or her
permission. These families are in exile, and some are political or religious
refugees who may not want their information broadly disseminated -- which is
why that section of our website has a password entrance page.

2) You can post the short biographies, with just the names (not code
numbers), on the site to encourage the group to participate in the choice of
who to sponsor. We don't yet have a scanned photograph of Kungal Tsephel and
may not for a few weeks, so if seeing a picture of the child is important,
maybe you can focus on Lobsang Dolma or refer the members to us for the
passcode to our site, and they can view the other photos and biographies we
already have online. Once the biographies and photos are posted to the
website, we can only "hold" one child for a potential sponsor at a time.

3) Small gifts are fine, but keep in mind that an individual in most Tibetan
communities finds it quite discomforting to receive something that cannot
easily be shared with others. Books and inexpensive games may therefore make
better gifts than individual items such as clothing, although items such as
gloves or socks, which most children have (at least in some form) may also
be fine. Our director once took a young (about 11 years old) Tibetan monk on
a "shopping trip" during one of their visits, and the only item he would
allow them to buy him was a toothbrush! My advice: get to know the child you
sponsor a little bit and then use your sense of the child to guide you about
the specifics!

Since the schools are the site of delivery for packages, we request that
sponsors send only small gifts that do not single out one child as special
or loved while the other children receive nothing. We understand that large
organizations sometimes supply clothes for an entire school or an entire
class at once, which does not have the same effect.

We are also mindful of maintaining a focus on providing for basic needs and
for each child's education. We therefore encourage sponsors to consider an
additional sponsorship (or a donation, for example, to support a preschool
child at the Yong Ling Kindergarten) rather than send gifts of larger value
to a particular sponsored child.

4) Visiting is very much encouraged, either with one of our annual tours or
individually.

5) We're on a Mac computer in our office, but I'm very familiar with
OpenOffice and had it running on my PC at home for a bit (I couldn't use it
for the database work I needed, though). Putting our documents into pdf
format is a good idea, which I think we should be able to implement from
here.

One question for you: how many members will be involved with the
sponsorship? We usually only have one sponsor (or one family) per child,
which keeps things manageable in terms of both correspondence and visits. If
the group joining with you to sponsor is quite large, we might ask that they
send correspondence through you rather than directly to the child, since the
staff at TCV will have your name as the sponsor. Members who wish to visit
will probably just need to identify their relation to you.

Also, if you do post anything to your website, can you help me enroll as a
member so that I can see the post?

We look forward to hearing from you with your further questions or your
decision regarding which child to sponsor!

Best regards,

Kathy

Quick interim reply, 8th March, 2005:-

Hi Kathy,

Apologies for the delay - have had heavy work commitments lately. I think we will sponsor Lobsang Dolma - I would very much like to see her sad face (it has been haunting me) with a smile and happiness shining from her eyes.

Please wait before sending me details so I can reply to your email in full.

take care,

Ken

Here is the initial draft that I will have to edit so I will add more when time permits:-

About 6 years ago I had this idea that #macintosh should sponsor a Tibetan family or child. The Dali Lama at the time was using a powerbook (he may still well do) and the Tibetan plight is one I have been actively involved in for quite some time.

The idea was to contribute $30 (AUD) a month and to raise $360 so that one year was paid in advance. If my memory is correct I was looking for 24 #mac people to each contribut $15 a year. A few people leaped to the fore and contributed (see below - Contributors) some said they would and never did. Unfortunetly after trying for a few weeks it never made it to the target.

Also, at the time, there was only one or two Tibetan sponsorship programs and they were to sponsor a monk or nun in their buddhist training. I made enquiries to the the Tibetan Government in Exile who directed me on to othere, who directed me onto yet others, etc. and I eventually found a Tibetan family to sponsor. I put the information up on the web hoping it would spur #macintosh on with the contribtuions but it never happened.

As I thought about what to do about it as well as coping with life and recovering from an illness - the project slipped further down my priority list until I forgot about it.

Thank you! A Project reaching resolution - 23rd February, 2005 2am

I had an interesting conversation about 1 am with a #mac regular tonight (or should I say this morning). I won't mention his name but he will know who it is if he reads this. This was his words:-

he: "Isn't sure he wants anything to do with you after finding out you spent that tibetan fund* :\"
he: "anyway night"
me: "oh sheesh - I forgot all about that :/"
me: "oh well - if you want to write me off like that - it's up to you"
he: "you ripped the whole channel off Ken"
he: "and that's not cool"

He then changed his nick - but the next two lines of convo, once I found him again, are not really worth taking up the space for. The intention of the story that one or two people are trying to portray about me is quite clear and I am not going to even bother with that.

What is really important is that I have been reminded of something that I have wanted to do for a long time - something that helps others, soemthing that may cause other online communities (like #macintosh) to also undertake to do similar things and something that can also make #macintosh proud to be part of. We arn't just a bumch of geeks with out techno toys - we are a community that cares about others and what happens in the world.

So I thank those concerned who have brought it back to my attention :) You have aided in something worhwhile.

Well I began the process tonight! It finally lives!

Here is the website for the Tibetan Sponsorhip Project.

The particular program I have chosen is the Tibetan Children's Village and here is a brief description:-

"The Tibetan Children's Village (TCV), is an integrated community for the care and education of orphans, semi-orphans and destitute Tibetan children in exile. His Holiness the Dalai Lama proposed in 1960 that this center be established to care for the many Tibetan refugee children."

The following people I know contributed:-

mort
rik
MrMonster
doctor
noddy
moonshado
lady
fizzer
Timelord
ScoobyDoo
aeon
Topazmoon
Ziggi
Obrien
Kyp
freedom - myself - and I was also going to pay for:-
stardream (who also had helped me on various projects)

shiz - some of you may remember her - well about 9 years ago when Shiz was still in Japan, rik got into a bit of trouble & I thought it may be a good idea to see if #mac could raise some money to help him out (remember that Genni?) . Shiz sent about $10 (US) over & she was the only who did because rik managed to get out of the trouble he was in. Shiz told me to donate it to a charity or something so I finally found a use for the money.

I have a list of all people who contributed and also committed to contributing - but didn't. One did mention that once I was close to the total amount he would contribute. This was Phildo, who was very interested as, if it proved a successful project in #macintosh, he would also initiate it in another channel.

The program is $30 (US) a month - more than what I envisaged back then - but considering inflation and everything else - it doesn't really matter. It will be a oznac sponsorship and I will make sure it is paid for the first year on behalf of those who did contribute for the channel sponsorship even though the money raised covers roughly a quarter of it.

It may have been late in coming - but better late than never and I thank those who did for the trust they placed in me.

All correspondence and interaction will be done on behalf of #macintosh and those who contributed are welcome to participate in this. It will all go up here on the website including photos, documents and such (I will have to work it into the navigation of the site somehow). As it evolves, whoever wants to from #macintosh can participate.

It will continue for a year and at the end of that year if #macintosh wants it to continue we can share the cost. If #mac doesn't, then I will continue it on my own privately.