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Printer-Friendly ModeVisiting student shares social entrepreneurship experiences at lecture
October 23, 2006 —
Improving community life through development projects was the focus of a social entrepreneurship lecture held Tuesday in the Alan W. Ott Auditorium.
Xirejiancuo, a student from, Reed College in Portland, Oregon, was invited to speak at the lecture. Xirejiancuo conducts community developmental projects in the Tibetan area of which he is from, focusing mainly on educational aspects.
Xirejiancuo explained that life in Tibet depends entirely on livestock. The country's food, supplies, and clothing all come from animals.
As the climate is normally chilly, grass is usually dry and there are no vegetables to eat. He said many of the citizens are living like animals and he wishes to improve the standards of living for them.
To date, Xirejiancuo has completed 11 developmental projects. One includes supporting 1,000 students with new bedding while they attended school in a small village.
Instead of using animal skin and their school desks for comfort, they received mattresses, blankets, sheets, and pillows to warm them in the cold Tibetan climate.
"Students suffer from the cold and get sick," Xirejiancuo said. "This situation creates a lot of obstacles to their life."
Since the weather is cold most of the year, Xirejiancuo stressed it is very important for students to have these sorts of necessities. Without them, they would continue to push the classroom tables together and sleep there or on the floor, as there are no dormitories.
The funding for the project and other projects he has completed came from the Bridge Fund in San Francisco. The Bridge Fund gave him $15,000 in 2002 to restore a temple in Sa dkyil, which is where he is from.
Xirejiancuo believes his improvements will affect the community forever. He wants to make students more interested in traditional parts of culture rather than just the modern parts of it.
"This is really important for the future of the younger generations," he said. "As a Tibetan student myself I feel like I have a responsibility to improve this situation."
Gregory says his future includes building schools for villages that have never had one, supplying more bedding for students, bringing electricity to schools so students don't have to learn by candlelight, and more working on solar cooker projects.
He said women can spend many hours a day looking for firewood to cook for their families. With solar cookers, much less time will be wasted and women will have more of an opportunity to become educated.
Xirejiancuo's largest emphasis was on Tibetan education. He would like to see students broaden their horizons and leave their tiny villages.