“Tibetan Freedom Movement” Could be the most Popular Cause on Facebook

The Tibetan Freedom Movement is neck-in-neck for the title of the most popular Cause on the social networking website, Facebook, and is poised to win the grand prize of $50,000. For the last month and a half, the Movement has been competing in the Facebook and Case Foundation's online fundraising competition, the Giving Challenge.

"We've already won eight daily challenges, where we had the most donors in one day. We've also been the leading Cause at several points during the competition," said Tenzin Choedon, Program Coordinator with Students for a Free Tibet India. "There has been such a huge outpouring of support that we feel we can win this if people continue to donate."

The Tibetan Freedom Movement was set up by Students for a Free Tibet (SFT) to raise awareness about the Tibetan cause on Facebook. Its membership has grown quickly, especially since the beginning of the Giving Challenge in December. It now has over 3,600 members and has raised nearly $46,000. SFT plans on using the money raised through the Challenge on their Olympics campaign in the upcoming months.

However, the Tibetan Freedom Movement is up against tough competition. The current first place Cause is Love Without Boundaries Foundation, a group that provides assistance to Chinese orphans. In past days, SFT members have discovered a blog where a Chinese person has appealed to their fellow countrymen and women to support Love Without Boundaries, in order to prevent what they call the "Tibetan Independence Movement" from winning.

"This should be a rallying cry for us Tibetans. Do we really want to be defeated by the Chinese?" said Tenzin Choeying, National Coordinator of SFT India. "We were first place a couple days ago, we can do it again."

The Giving Challenge winner will be announced on Facebook by February 2nd. Anyone with a Facebook account can donate to the Tibetan Freedom Movement through the 'Causes’ application.

Posted on Phayul.com [Thursday, January 31, 2008 16:20]

The view from my balcony...

More photos of Dharamsala.

Life in Dharamsala

I wake up wrapped in my sleeping bag with cold fresh air on my face, and sun shining on my curtains. After a while, I muster up enough willpower to get out of my warm cocoon, and rush through the cold to get dressed, muttering “achoo” (Tibetan for “it’s cold”) under my breath. Stepping out onto my balcony, the valley of Himachal Pradesh spreads out below me, littered with clusters of houses and villages. To my left and behind me is the first range of the Himalayas. Every morning I have the same thought and smile to myself: “I live in the Himalayas.” I stop on my way to work to indulge in a gluten-free buckwheat pancake and savour my first cup of milk tea, holding it in both hands to warm my fingers.

On days off, I sit in a café for hours on end, reading, doing Sudoku puzzles, talking with friends, staring off into the valley. The pace of life here is beautiful. I am blessed with the chance to slow down and enjoy every moment. I still have to stop and take a breath when the work-a-holic Westerner in me freaks out because the internet is down or there is no electricity. But a cup of tea at a friend’s café normally does the trick and restores the calmness in me that is pervasive here.

I think of how much I’ve always wanted to live in the mountains, not sure that my interests would ever allow it. But here I am, with a job I love and getting to live in the mountains. As my mum and Claire like to say, I am so lucky!

However, the more I settle in here, the more I wonder how it will feel to be in Montreal again.

Being Back in Montreal

Being back “home” in Canada was a strange experience. First of all, my stay was so short that it was hardly possible to feel that I was truly THERE, and not just passing through. I felt like a vagabond passing through a city that I once loved and called home. I felt like a stranger – a bizarre, unsettling, and completely unexpected feeling. A friend who has travelled quite a bit asked my on my first day back if I felt depressed to be back. At the time, I thought: “Why would I be depressed?” But after the jet-lag and initial excitement at being back wore off, that feeling of not belonging sank in. Thankfully I have some amazingly supportive and understanding friends who let me hide out in their apartment and others who let me whine. Those who have travelled commiserated with me on the strange readjustment to life in the big city.

Second, I realized that there were some people I really missed. Seeing them again was like opening a wound that has scabbed over – such a beautiful analogy! I seemed to have suppressed or managed to ignore how much I missed them. But seeing these friends again made me sad knowing that I would be leaving again so soon and would miss them again.

Being in Dharamsala now, Montreal seems so like a million miles away. All my stuff is in storage in Ottawa, so it feels like I have very little connection to the city I once loved… it feels like a lover that slowly slid away. I hope that one day Montreal will instill in me the same excitement and wonder it once did.

Reflections on a Year Away

One year ago, I planned to leave Montreal to try something new. I wanted the chance to pursue some of my other interests that always seemed to be brushed aside because of my all-consuming involvement with the Tibet movement. Now I find myself back home, returning to the same work for Tibet that I was doing before I left. Running away from it all made me realize that I was on the right path – a path that will take me to India next, after my Christmas pit-stop in Montreal.

Being away from home and friends and lovers and all things familiar, gave me a lot of time for introspection and reflection on my view of life. It’s like being given a blank slate, and gives a strange sense of freedom because no one knows you. No one has conceptions of who you are and how you should behave. You can completely rid yourself of accumulated baggage – if you let go of it yourself.

One is able to construct everything: the life one wants, the people one wants to surround oneself with, and perhaps most interestingly, the person one wants to be. It’s a new context in which to give up old habits and hang-ups. It’s a situation that allows for introspection, to be able to pinpoint values, beliefs, desires and dreams, and to learn to live by them. The distance also affords one the clarity to learn from past lessons, experiences, and relationships.

I have learned that who I love and why I love them is a lot more important than who loves me. And I have learned that my love for people doesn’t diminish over distance or time.

Perhaps most importantly, I am more comfortable with the uncertainty in life because I have lived it and let it take me to places I never could have imagined.