Solar school and community playground for Zangla

Since we operate in Zanskar, initially as a heritage conservation project based on volunteering, we realized that for successful results we need to move towards a more comprehensive approach. Our volunteers joined local education and established a scholarship for Zangla children continuing their studies in high school. These raised our local recognition significantly. Spending more time in the region, we gained further competence in social issues as well. >>>

Csoma`s Room Foundation announces with profound regret and deepest sorrow the loss of our main ladakhi partner, our hero, our friend, co-founder of Tibet Heritage Fund, widely acclaimed, most respected André Alexander who left us unexpectedly at the young age of 47. >>>

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Saving Csoma’s Room or more?

Cultural heritage preservation through sports, education and sustainable development, with volunteers

This is the story of how an independent non-profit initiation for heritage conservation learned through their own experience how to become more successful with their restoration project through paying more attention to the local community.

We started up as a heritage conservation project. It took some time to realize what is the reason for the villagers to consider us still strangers after spending a lot of time with saving their local heritage. The ice broke when we offered our help in the education as well.

A Himalayan village is a fragile organic texture that needs to be addressed in its social complexity, what is much more than emergency interventions on their material heritage. Through education we got a cleaner picture of their needs and nonetheless on healthy ways of cooperation to our mutual benefit. They understood more about our motivations through the eyes of their kids, than through their fellows working with us on the palace.

In the remote fortified palace of Himalayan Zangla, Alexander Csoma de Kőrös a 19th century pioneer of Tibetology, wrote the first Tibetan-English dictionary and Tibetan grammar of scientific standard. His room in Zangla Palace, identified by Baktay and the neighboring shrine full of valuable relics are about to collapse.

In the summer of 2008 a group of architects decided to do some emergency interventions on Zangla Palace, in order to save the room where Alexander Csoma de Kőrös started to write his dictionary in 1823.

Soon our initial mission was set: to restore the building using local materials, traditional methods, local labor and enthusiastic volunteers, supported by satisfied donators.

In 2010 we registered Csoma’s Room Foundation officially in Budapest, Hungary, as a non-profit organization behind our activity.

Since 2008 every summer a group of international volunteers come to Zangla and join their efforts with local people to save the Palace from collapsing. Our volunteers learn about the ladakhi culture through living, eating, playing and working together with the local community. This close relationship led us to do more than mere restoration works: we found ourselves teaching, offering scholarships and providing books and stationary supply to the local schools.

Our project runs on a micro-donation scheme that provides opportunity to a significant number of people to participate or support our efforts.

Csoma’s Room Foundation is focusing on the sustainable use of local materials, revival of traditional skills, promotion of local economic development and education. Many of us being architects, we are eager to develop sustainable contemporary architecture practices based on the local heritage, particularly in Zanskar.

Please find the actual state of our projects in the News section. Your participation as volunteer or donator is more than welcome.

Csoma`s Wheel

In 2008 the Kitchen Budapest media lab installed a contemporary artwork in the palace, thus ensuring a creative presence in Zangla, with respect for traditions, remembering Csoma, in a way that can be a motivating for everybody to visit the place and to donate for the restoration.

More about the Wheel

About Alexander Csoma de Kőrös

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