For Feb. 2012 Majestic Living Magazine

TIBETAN PLATEAU TRIP DETAILS

By Margaret Cheasebro

San Juan College is offering eight to twelve people an opportunity to volunteer and tour part of the Tibetan Plateau June 4-18. Registration deadline is Monday, March 5.

They will do a photovoltaic (PV) installation at a new medical clinic in Sihurong, a remote village on the east edge of the Tibetan Plateau.

The medical clinic, overseen by the village’s Buddhist monastery, practices a mixture of traditional Tibetan and modern Western medicine. The PV installation will give the clinic 24-hour lighting to improve the clinic’s ability to care for villagers and provide a TV/DVD on which to play medical and educational videos.

People who sign up for the trip will learn about solar design and theory, PV installation basics, Buddhism, and the history and culture of the Tibetan people. They will also go on hikes in surrounding mountains, among them Minyak Gonghar, one of the highest peaks on Earth. There will be visits to local Buddhist monasteries, to a local orphanage and to the panda breeding center in Chengdu.

The experience will be tailored to students’ interests.

“People who have more advanced solar backgrounds can work on the existing skills they

have, learn the finer points of solar installations and what can go wrong in remote areas with wide temperature extremes,” said solar engineer Mike Sullivan, an adjunct SJC professor, who will teach the three-credit renewable energy component of the class.

“Folks who have zero knowledge can learn the basics,” he said. “If they mostly want to learn about the religious and social culture, they can do that.”

Chris Strouthopoulos, an assistant professor of English at SJC, will teach the three-credit humanities component of the course. Strouthopoulos has lived in Japan and Greece and has visited over two dozen countries, ranging from Nepal to Peru. This will be the fifth international trip he has led for San Juan College.

The Tibetan Village Project (TVP) built the medical clinic in 2009. TVP describes itself as a non-profit, non-political organization dedicated to promoting sustainable development while preserving Tibet’s cultural heritage. TVP will provide local guides and logistical support for the trip. It has long standing ties with the village of Sihurong.

TVP was founded in 2001 by Tamdin Wangdu, a native Tibetan who immigrated to America and study at the University of Colorado, Boulder. After earning an MBA from CU, Tamdin founded TVP and devoted his life to helping his fellow villagers. It has a long track record of successfully completing projects on the Tibetan Plateau while working with private individuals and institutions.

Estimated trip cost is $3,950, which includes round trip airfare, all ground transportation, meals, lodging, and permits while in China. The cost may come down if twelve people go. SJC’s tuition cost is not included in the price. It will range from $41 per credit hour for in-state participants to $105 per credit hour for out-of-state students.

To sign up for the trip, go to www.sanjuancollege/edu/pages/6075.asp and follow the directions in the “Signing Up” section. For more details, call Strouthopoulos at 505-566-3210.

For February 2012 Majestic Media

SOLAR ENGINEER MIKE SULLIVAN HARNESSES THE SUN FOR THE THIRD WORLD

By Margaret Cheasebro

Solar engineer Mike Sullivan’s address is Tacoma – his Tacoma pickup, that is.

For the last two-and-a-half years he’s lived the life of a nomad as he installs solar projects in remote areas of third world countries. He also teaches on-line classes on battery based solar electric design and installation for the nonprofit Solar Energy International.

What he teaches is the same type of work he’ll do as an adjunct professor for San Juan College during one of the college’s international projects, a two-week service trip to eastern Tibet June 4-18. It will be Sullivan’s fourth trip to Tibet.

He will oversee installing a solar electric system for a medical clinic run by Buddhist monks. Besides teaching a renewable energy class, he will train Tibetans how to maintain and repair the solar system.

His co-instructor, SJC assistant professor of English Chris Strouthopoulos, will teach a humanities class focusing on the area’s culture and religious beliefs and oversee the trip’s details.

Eight students needed for Tibet trip

At least eight participants much sign up for the trip to happen. Up to twelve may participate. Students are encouraged to extend their visit beyond the project dates.

“Once you’re there, there’s an amazing variety of things to explore and very little additional carbon footprint or cost,” Sullivan said. “I plan on spending six months there after we complete the project, but not everybody has that flexibility.”

Strouthopoulos admires Sullivan’s commitment to the environment. “There’s a lot of people who say they believe certain things, but Mike truly lives what he believes and is willing to structure his life around those principles,” he said. “He’s very committed to environmental preservation causes. He lives very simply without many frills and extraneous possessions.”

Partners with Tibetan Village Project

The college is partnering with Tibetan Village Project (TVP), dedicated to promoting sustainable development while preserving Tibet’s cultural heritage. TVP built the medical clinic for which the college will install solar power.

Donations for the solar installation are tax deductable and should be made to TVP, noting that it’s for the college trip. Donations may be made at http://www.tibetanvillageproject.org/help/html, referencing the “clinic solar project”.

“They’re telling San Juan College what their needs and wishes are,” Sullivan said. “We’re trying to design a system that will do what they need.”

He has been giving slide shows in the Four Corners area to raise donations and foster interest in the trip.

“I’m an introvert, but I find it pretty easy to talk about solar energy because it fires me up so much,” Sullivan said.

Great need for remote medical clinics

Tamdin Wangdu, who co-founded Tibetan Village Project in 2001, has a personal reason for wanting to improve medical facilities in Tibet. He grew up in a small village not far from Lhasa, but lost contact with his family for many years. When he finally reconnected with them, he discovered his father had died after falling seriously ill in his village one night. Friends tried to take him by horseback to the nearest clinic several days away, but he died on the journey.

Sullivan became friends with Wangdu in Colorado when the Tibetan was forming TVP.

“I was on the board of directors in those first few years when it was a very small organization,” Sullivan said. “The board now is a much more professional group than random solar guys like me.”

Sullivan grew up in NJ, fled west

Sullivan didn’t start out as a solar engineer. He grew up in New Jersey and earned an electrical engineering degree at Rutgers University.

“I fled west immediately after that,” he said. “I was 12 when I made up my mind that New Jersey wasn’t lighting my fire. I thought Pennsylvania might be nice. The older I got, the further west I looked. Eventually, I thought the Southwest would be best. I hated winters in the Northeast. I wanted to go someplace that had cactus and rattlesnakes. I wound up getting a job in Los Alamos, which has a fairly wintry climate. I immediately fell in love with winters.”

For seven years, he worked for a contractor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory as a design engineer. He designed equipment used to ratify nuclear non-proliferation treaties between the United States and the former Soviet Union.

“I felt like I played a small part in helping both countries come to a comprehensive nuclear test ban,” he said. “I got to work with several scientists and engineers in the Soviet Union.”

Once the nuclear test ban took effect, he had to find other work. The contractor offered him a job in weapons related programs that supported the Department of Energy. That didn’t appeal to him.

Developed interest in mountaineering

“I had developed an interest in mountaineering, back country skiing, and rock climbing,” he said. “I decided it might be a lot of fun in Colorado, so I took a voluntary layoff from the contractor and moved to Buena Vista, Colorado. I did a bunch of odd jobs for awhile, some contract engineering, construction, a little bit of guiding.”

He discovered that solar installation was a perfect niche for him. Though he saw his income plummet by 80 percent, he called it the best job change of his life.

“For 10 or 15 years as an engineer, there were a lot of days where I struggled to motivate myself to go to work,” Sullivan said. “Then I changed careers, and I found it was very easy to motivate myself to work. I realized I had been on the wrong path for a long time. I’m a poster child for advocating following your heart’s desire rather than the conventional path. I feel so much happier with what I do, and I feel like I’m contributing so much more to the world.”

Bought land in Crestone, Colo.     

In 1999, he bought an undeveloped parcel of land in Crestone, south of Buena Vista on which he planned to build an off-the-grid house. Around that same time, he worked as a technical consultant with Jade Mountain, a company in Boulder, Colo. that did sustainable living solar technology. His first big consulting job with Jade Mountain was for a group of people privately funded by a Hong Kong businessman, who planned a solar installation at a Buddhist monastery in western Tibet.

“My boss asked me to help them out for a few weeks,” Sullivan said. “I gave them

specifications, prices and information. Then they invited me to join the installation team.”

With the blessing of his Jade Mountain boss, Sullivan went to work for the privately funded group.

“The guy who headed the project wound up getting fired,” Sullivan said. “They asked me to replace him. It was a transformative experience, spending almost a year in Asia, visiting Tibet for the first time, and working in this incredibly remote, austere, stunningly beautiful, haunting area of far west Tibet. It was a three-day drive to the nearest tree. There were mountains as far as the eye could see.”

He spent two months in Hong Kong and Eastern China, assembling materials and overseeing the fabrication of racks and other supporting material, getting them tested and packed into shipping containers.

Visits several countries

After spending two-and-a-half months in Tibet to complete the project, he spent time exploring Nepal, northern Indian and, eventually, New Zealand.

“I was on the road and in between homes,” Sullivan said. “I had my climbing gear with me, so it seemed a good time for that.”

While in Nepal, he met Strouthopoulos, who was visiting Southeast Asia for the first time. They climbed mountains together and became friends.

Once back in the States, Sullivan lived on his Crestone property and built a shed, garage and straw bale house, all solar powered. He eventually sold the property in 2009 when someone built a house too close for his comfort.

On Sullivan’s second trip to Tibet, he again worked for the group funded by the Hong King businessman.

“We did some upgrades on the monastery solar system,” he said. “We improved it to add lights for the living quarters and kitchen.”

Excellent at remote installations

Carl Bickford, professor of engineering and renewable energy at San Juan College, admires Sullivan.

“He’s excellent at remote hard-to-get-to, off-grid solar installation systems where there are limited resources,” Bickford said. “He’s creative, and he’s good at doing the work with the people and equipment available.”

Sullivan’s passion these days is solar education. Solar projects become useless when they stop working unless local people know how to maintain and repair them. He wants to spread that expertise.

He’s consulted on a wind and solar project at a group of lodges in Peru, discussed

projects in Nepal and India, and worked on several hospital projects in Haiti. He also did solar work on back country cabins in British Columbia.

He’s in no hurry to settle down.

“I’m enjoying my life on the road,” he said. “ I have yet to find a place that really calls to me to settle in.”

This article by Margaret Cheasebro is published in www.majesticmediausa.com. To learn more about this trip, click here

A group of volunteers built a greenhouse to benefit a school with about 40 children. Malnutrition among Tibetan children is rampant and has resulted in startling rates of stunted growth. The greenhouse is about 15 x 20 (can ranges from 10 x 20 to 30 x 40) and uses metal tube and wood for the beams; mud, stone and wood for the structure; heavy duty plastic for the cover and fabric blanket for basic the insulation.

The greenhouse provides food, promotes healthier diet and generates income with surplus vegetables from high yield season.  The greenhouse extends the growing season from four months to ten months and produces vegetables. Vegetables from the greenhouses will feed and improve the health of school children and family members in Tibet.

Before volunteers came, our local staff has into sustainability of the greenhouse project by looking into issues of whether or not the school have viable soil to grow vegetables, adequate water supply and able to maintain the greenhouse. Volunteers covered their own travel expenses, raised fund from friends and families to cover the greenhouse construction materials, project beneficiaries provide the land and local villagers volunteer with general labor to help the experienced Tibetan greenhouse builders.Volunteers felt good knowing that they made differences in lives of school children and had better travel experiences by connecting with locals.

Free to Smile Dental Mission to Tibet

September 18^th – 27^th 2010: Five volunteer dentists with the Free to Smile Foundation, a nonprofit organization “dedicated to supporting and sustaining comprehensive, quality surgical and dental services to poor and underprivileged children and adolescents throughout the world,” traveled to Kham with Conscious Journeys to provide dental work to villagers.  Volunteers also assessed the villages’ dental needs and those at Free to Smile are now interested in starting a FTS program in Tibet.  They treated patients through a local clinic; over 120 patients from three different communities, many of them children, were given access to dental care, most for the very first time!  In the future, dentists with Free to Smile would like to visit these Tibetan communities annually and are currently making plans to create a dental clinic in the area and train Tibetan dentists! If you are interested in learning more about the Free to Smile Foundation, please visit www.freetosmile.org.

Medical Care International Mission to Tibet –  July 26^th – August 9^th 2010. Medical Care International (MCI), “a nonprofit organization that coordinates volunteer medical missions to needy communities worldwide,” traveled to the Tibetan Plateau with Conscious Journeys in order to asses the health and sanitation conditions in villages outside of Chengdu and provide basic medical care to villages with a focus on education and prevention of common ailments.

Doctors and nurses kicked off their trip by visiting a hospital, the largest in the county.  They were also taken to visit a local primary school where they received a warm welcome with smiles and Khatags (traditional white scarves given to honored guests) presented by the students.  MCI brought medical supplies for the village and were given a tour by one of the local village leaders.  They were briefed on common issues regarding sanitation, garbage and human waste disposal, the villagers’ daily diets and diseases and ailments common to the area.

A two-day temporary clinic was set up in a local monastery, treating elderly and sick patients first.  Two nurses were in charge of checking blood pressure and recording patients’ case history while three doctors diagnosed patients and wrote prescriptions (high blood pressure seemed to be one of the areas biggest health concerns).  Village leaders where given booklets on basic sanitation and dieting awareness, allowing them to continue educating villagers about proper healthcare after the doctors had left.

Doctors then visited a monastic school and were greeted by children wearing Tibetan clothes donated by MCI.  A temporary clinic was set up at the school and they began treating the students, and later, other local patients.  Over a hundred students and villagers were diagnosed and treated! The school prepared momos (Tibetan dumplings) and a traditional Tibetan dance performance in honor of their MCI guests.

In addition to providing medical care to rural villagers and students, medical volunteers also had the opportunity to visit regional sites including temples and monasteries, Paoma Mountain, the Museum of Thangka, and the Panda Breeding Center in Chengdu.

 

 

For more information on MCI and their Conscious Journeys Mission to Tibet, please visit

http://medicalcareintl.org/?pg=past&mission=tibet10&section=travel