Thupten Choling Nunnery Roofing Project

Thupten Choling is located in the Solu-Khumbu near Junbesi, south of Tengboche. It is one of the biggest Monasteries in Nepal, housing more than 500 buddhist practitioners, mostly nuns. Most of the nuns are refugees and some of the poorest people living in Nepal. They have virtually nothing and are in great need of help.

The head of the Monastery is the now well known Kyabje Trulshik Rinpoche, he is over 85 years old and one of the teachers of H.H. the Dalai Lama. In the year 2000, at the start of the rebuilding of the Thupten Choling assembly hall, Kyabje Trulshik Rinpoche expressed the wish to improve the living condition of his nuns, especially the roofing condition of the huts.

The most pressing need is for tin sheets which provides decent weather proof roofs for the small meditation huts.  Wooden roofs look very romantic, but they leak, are expensive to maintain and particularly the older nuns find it difficult to repair their old roofs. In addition, it is important to provide efficient, smokeless stoves to the Nuns to conserve firewood and improve the air quality in the houses. Also any nuns who do not have a window should receive a small skylight, to bring light into the huts. This can improve the general health of the nuns, many have arthritis, T.B. and other damp related sicknesses. In addition many nuns had no hut at all and 21 new huts were provided with roofs by Sacred Land. This project is directly improving the health of the nuns through improving their houses.

First it seemed to be impossible, because there are over 250 huts and tin sheet for one roof costs about US$ 250. But then, seeing the grave situation, together with Jeni Crump we applied for help to the Australian Embassy and the first 18 roofs were improved. Since then, through a huge collective effort hundreds of different donations, large and small have been generously given by all kinds of people. Many raise money through selling Sacred Land products for charity. By spring 2008, about 180 roof have been completed with an collected overall investment of US$ 50.000,– to date. 

The construction of new roofs is still ongoing and donations are still needed! We have 70 roofs left!

The coordination is largly undertaken by Helen who works with Michael in Thupten Choling.