Khensur Kangur Rinpoche

General Information

Volunteers

What Sponsors Receive

The Need for more Sponsors

Benefits of Sponsoring

Contact the scheme

• The scheme operates under a legal Trust Deed with Tibetan Buddhist Institute which sets out the conditions under which the scheme operates.  One of these conditions is that the scheme is fully audited each year.
• Contributions are held in the scheme's bank account and sent to Sera Jey Monastery every six months at the end of June and December.  This is to save on the huge cost of handling (bank charges especially in India) and cutting down the work involved in distributing the money.  
• The distribution of your donations are managed by a senior monk at the monastery.  The recipients are identified by photograph, name and identity number before handing over your contribution Each recipient must sign that the money has been received. These records are returned to the schemes administrators in Australia for checking and verification. Sponsors are welcome to see these records.
   
• Reminder Service:  On 1st June and 1st December, for Aus$5.00 per year, the scheme can send you a reminder (by email) that your contribution is due.  Payments must reach the coordinator before 15th June and 15th December each year.
• Receipts and Newsletter:  Receipts for all payments are sent in June each year.  This is to keep the costs down to a minimum.  Along with the receipt, we send an annual newsletter, which you may like to advertise in.  All advertising is on a single A4 page and the ads are about the size of a business card - 90 x 55mm  and costs Aus$15.00.  Money raised this way helps defray the cost of running the scheme. ent and advert by 1st December each year. You may like to sponsor (or part sponsor) the cost of mailing the newsletter and receipt or the cost of printing both.  If so, your name and/or business name is noted in the newsletter, along with our gratitude and thanks for helping in this way.
• Running Cost Donations:  Some sponsors like to send with their contribution, extra money to help with the enormous running costs of the scheme....this is most welcome, and helps with items like paper, printing ink, postage, envelopes, domain costs, banking (including the cost of banking in India), photos of monks, stationery, etc. etc.  However, there is NO obligation or expectation to contribute in this way when you undertake sponsorship.

Upon taking up the responsibility of sponsorship, you will receive:

• A photograph of your the monk, nun or child with their name, house number and PIN.   The use of their PIN number in correspondence with us and also in any letters you may want to write, is important, to avoid confusion with Tibetan names which are often quite similar.

• Their postal address.  There is no obligation to write; this information is provided simply for those who wish to do so.

• The Annual Newsletter, which provides news on the scheme, stories from recipients and so on.

• A Payment Record Sheet for you to keep track of where you are paid up to.

• An Annual Receipt sent to you each June.  This lists the payments received and the sponsors current payment status.  This is also a good time to double check your address and other personal details and inform us if something has changed.

Many recipients write to their sponsor to thank them and inform them about progress in their studies and life.  Most don't speak or write English, so it can be difficult for them to write and it is not guaranteed that you will receive a letter from them.  Having said that, many still manage to find a translator and keep in touch, which can be quite rewarding. As you might imagine the translators are in high demand.

To escape the ghastly oppression in Tibet, new refugees continue to arrive from India.  These monks, nuns and lay Tibetans  arrive with nothing and need all the support they can get, and are soon added to the list waiting for sponsorship.  

Existing sponsors sometimes relinquish their sponsorship for a variety of reasons, and the sponsee then goes back onto the waiting list.

At the present time over 500 people are still awaiting sponsorship.

On one level, sponsoring means sending Aus$10.00 per month to an unknown person in India or Tibet.  However, it seems to be much, much more for many of the recipients.  Some sponsees arrive at Sera, after a perilous month or two trek over the freezing Himalayas.  They may be shot at, lose fingers and toes to frostbite, generally in very poor health, frightened and homesick.  If caught, they face certain imprisonment and torture.  They arrive at Sera, amongst 5,000 others, and may sleep on a mat on the floor, with materialistically little else.  With a lot of luck, in two or three years time, they may get a sponsor.

After all this, some are so homesick, or concerned for the ones left behind, they go back to Tibet, knowing they may be thrown in prison and suffer the appalling consequences.  Others return because their parents are sick are facing extreme difficulties in Tibet and they may want to support their family by being present.  It may be that because they now has a very good education and knowledge of the Tibetan culture (Tibetans in Tibet don't have access to this knowledge) that they may want to return and teach or impart  knowledge in some way.   

  Monks simply want to be of benefit to others by learning Buddhist principles and philosophy, and perhaps go into the wider community to be of practical assistance using their education to become doctors, dentists, nurses, teachers etc. etc. 

No wonder these monks sometimes write to their sponsors, "Dear Mum...Dad etc" and asks about their "family".  Sponsorship is much more than sending a few paltry dollars for food and medicine.  To a degree, it is food and medicine for the heart.

What can start as an altruistic gift of Aus$10.00 per month for a needy person on the other side of the world, can become a bond of love and compassion, unhindered by the usual sense of gratefulness one experiences when a kindness is shown to another.  True giving is when there is no expectation of anything in return.  And yet, I believe we get a tremendous gift back....and that's an opportunity to be selfless;  to be concerned for the welfare of another; to regard another and act upon that feeling; simply to touch our own hearts desire to alleviate the suffering of another.