Reserve your free tickets here for Tuesday 26th February 2013 to hear a talk, in London, on Buddhist gardens by a world expert on the history of western as well as eastern gardens.

Tom Turner will be giving this free talk in London from 6.30 - 8.30pm. Tom visited the school in summer 2012 and is helping to create a landscape design for the DWLS campus.

Joining Tom will be Simon Drury-Brown, a landscape architect, who will talk about his visit to DWLS last year and his plans for the DWLS landscape programme in 2013.

The Sustainable Landscapes Research Group, School of Architecture, Design and Construction at the University of Greenwich is hosting the talks which are free to members of the public. The venue is:

King William 315 Lecture Theatre (LT KW315)
Old Royal Naval College
London, SE10 9LS

Tuesday, 26 February 2013 from 18:30 to 20:30 (GMT)

Tickets have to be reserved in advance through the link below. We look forward to seeing many of you there.

Click here to reserve your free tickets

We wish to create a lush garden landscape for the school community. We started this year in April with a volunteer landscape architect, Yiannis Baltagiannis, creating planted areas along the central residential spine of the campus, see below:

Yiannis started a plant nursery to nurture seedlings for additional planting, see below:

Yiannis also got the greenhouse in use again following the winter, see below:

After three months, Simon Brown, another volunteer landscape architect, took over from Yiannis.

Simon developed the plant nursery concept with a specialist from the University of Greenwich, London, Tom Turner. A new planting area in front of the greenhouse has been created for growing vegetables, see below:

Drip irrigation of the campus is planned for 2013, allowing controlled watering and efficient use of water.

We are creating a landscape strategy with help from specialists at the University of Greenwich. Tom Turner, spent two weeks in Ladakh to help with this process, see below:

The students enjoyed the summer gardening competition in which they worked on garden areas outside their classrooms, see below:

2012 was a busy year. Two IT-enabled classrooms were built, plus the North block of Residence 4 which will accommodate 44 remote area students. The masonry work on the mudslide defenses was also completed, the wall now being about 1km long and up to 3 metres high. A huge congratulations to the Construction Team.

Below: IT-enabled classrooms being painted and completed.

Below: Residence 4 under construction.

Below: The defensive wall to protect from any future mudslide event.

Below: The local Construction Manager (right) and UK Development Manager (left).

The students worked hard on designing, planting and nurturing their gardens over the spring and summer. The landscape architecture volunteer Yiannis Baltagiannis awarded certificates and trophies to the winning class in each section.

Druk White Lotus School and Arup Associates received The Emirates Glass LEAF Award for 'Best Sustainable Development' on 21st September 2012. Rachel Glynn and Sean Macintosh accepted the award on behalf of the team. Former Resident Engineers Dorothee Richter, Francesca Galeazzi, Nicola Perandin, Suria Ismail and Rob Baldock were there too.

Peaks Foundation returned to Ladakh in September this year with a trek in the Nubra Valley. After the "1 Peak 1 Week Ladakh Challenge" the team visited the school in their support of education for girls. The Challenge aims to provide funds for disadvantaged girls to attend the Druk White Lotus School in Shey

For trek details please click here

As part of a landscaping programme, students have started creating miniature gardens in front of their classrooms. A volunteer landscape architect, Yiannis, is currently working at the school and collaborating with landscape architects from the University of Greenwich (UK) on a landscape design for the whole campus.

His Eminence Kyabje Thuksey Rinpoche visited Ladakh between 14th and 18th April 2012. He visited Druk White Lotus School to give encouragement and provide advice as well as visiting Hemis Monastery to oversee the preparation works for the forthcoming 4th Annual Drukpa Council to be held there in August.

The school term finished on 15^th December 2011 for the long winter break. The school’s Principal, Mr Prasad Eledath, made an educational visit to the United Kingdom during January 2012.

A highlight of the trip was to visit the St Christopher School in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. DPKS has enjoyed a twinning with St Christopher School since 2005 when a group of students and staff from St Christopher first made a visit to Ladakh.

Since then a biennial visit has been established, with the UK students participating in a challenging trek in the Himalaya mountains, and spending time at DPKS delivering workshops and educational sessions.

Mr Eledath and the Head of St Christopher School, Mr Richard Palmer, had the opportunity to meet for the first time. The staff of St Christopher gave a tour of their campus and had discussions about the on-going twinning of the two schools, especially the next visit to DPKS which is scheduled for summer 2013. The students of both schools benefit enormously from the visits.

Modesto, based in London, has committed to run 108 km for the school. Please help by sponsoring Modesto's running effort via this link, http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/108run. Read Modesto's story here. Some time ago some friends from the Druk White Lotus School UK project office and from Live to Love asked me to do something special to celebrate 10 years of the Druk White Lotus School.

I thought about organising a party, but I have always been rubbish at organising parties. At the time I was developing a regular running routine and came up with the idea of running once for each one of the ten years been celebrated, 10 runs.

Initially, I thought about running 10 kilometres each time. But 100 kilometres did not sound quite right. 10.8 kilometres per run, a total of 108 kilometres, sounded more appropriate, more sensitive. 108 is a number with significance. Ladakhis, like the other Buddhist ethnic groups living on both sides of the Himalayas, often carry with them a rosary made out of 108 beads which they use to count the prayers they endlessly recite. Although prayers are recited 108 times and not 100 times, 100 turns of the rosary count as 10,000 recitations and not 10,800. I have always viewed this as, so to speak, going the extra mile. So I decided to run 108 kilometres, instead of 100 kilometres, between the end of September and the New Year to celebrate 10 Years of the Druk White Lotus School¸ and, at the same time, raise funds and awareness.

The Druk White Lotus School is both an ambitious construction and educational project, and a very special place in a very harsh environment; a place sometimes at the capricious mercy of the elements, last year’s (hopefully rare) flash flood and mudslide, and the endless flux of change that life is.

Having been captivated by the place and the people, especially the children, I have acquired a minimal experiential understanding of why it is so important to help educate the Ladakhi children: to preserve their traditions and give them a cultural identity, and, most importantly, to provide them with an education that could make the difference between living in poverty as adults or not.

If you are still sceptical or unmoved, try imagining yourself as a 9 year old child living in a place where:

• winter lasts 6 months and temperatures as low as -20C are reached regularly,
• there is no central heating, just a stove where cow dung is burned
• there are no toilets, just dry latrines or nature
• some children, those from a nomadic family, may live and grow up in a tent; nomadic children may spend the winter living in a tent made out of yak hair

You may think that living in these conditions is living in poverty. Having briefly experienced this way of life, I am unsure if I would describe it as poverty. Poverty is living in the slums of Delhi or Mumbai. By giving these children a good education, we are laying the foundations that  hopefully will keep them away from the slums and will help them preserve their heritage.

Please help and sponsor me on http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/108run , in return I will run 108 kilometres and I will  update the http://www.the108run.org  website regularly.

If you cannot sponsor me, please help by spreading the word.