YESHE
NORBU APPEAL FOR TIBET
Long-distance adoption and other projects
Yeshe Norbu Appeal for Tibet currently handles
approximately 1,300 long-distance adoptions
of Tibetan refugees in India and Nepal. As
with any voluntary organization, the association
was born spontaneously and gradually grew
over the years due to the dedication of many
people.
Two of the founders of ILTK and Yeshe Norbu,
Franco and Francesca Piatti, recount their
story:
In 1970 we were in Katmandu, in Nepal. After
20 days of travel by train and bus across
Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India,
maybe we should have been used to it, but
the sight of ragged and malnourished children
who passed their lives in the streets continued
to tug at our hearts. We wished we could help
all of them, maybe by taking some of them
home, but obviously it was impossible.
Four years later, our daughter was born –
pretty, very sweet, and with a serious brain
lesion due to a lack of oxygen at the time
of her birth.
The following year, in 1975, during the first
meditation course held in Italy by two great
Tibetan masters, we asked their help in performing
an international adoption of one of the street
children, who we hadn’t forgotten. They
advised us not to uproot them from their culture,
but instead to help them grow and study in
their environment: less trauma for the children,
for us the possibility of helping more than
one of them, a real contribution to the development
of their country’s human resources.
That was our first long-distance adoption.
Following this, other attendees of ILTK did
other adoptions and began to form a group
of adoptive parents. Seeing the good results
and the continuous arrival of newly escaped
refugees from Tibet, the persons in charge
of the refugee camps and monasteries began
to send an increasing number of requests.
To confront this humanitarian emergency, a
group of volunteers gradually created a lean
and dependable fundraising structure which,
thanks to the practical and organizational
support of Shiné, became Yeshe Norbu
Appeal for Tibet o.n.l.u.s. (a non-profit
organization of social utility).
Yeshe Norbu Appeal for Tibet is a member of
the FPMT. |
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