By Chris Fletcher
Santa Fe, New Mexico
International Studies
Phillips Scholar
After Mac: Watson Fellow
Before I came to Macalester I took a gap year and spent half of that year traveling in South East Asia. An experience living with a Tibetan family in northern India taught me about the situation that Tibetans are placed in—they are constantly reminded that they have no country to call their own. This experience instilled in me the desire to learn more about Tibetans and their history as well as to continue working with them. I developed a commitment to aid them, to promote Tibetan freedom, and to assist the needs of the exile communities.
Phillips Scholar
As many students know college can be costly. Though Macalester had given me financial aid, I was looking for a way to further ease the expenses on my family and myself. My sophomore year I came across scholarship information for the Phillips Scholarship. A pamphlet described it as an opportunity to design a project which would in some capacity aid a Minnesota community. If awarded the scholarship, the student would be given substantial grant money. Students at all private colleges in Minnesota competed for the project and I was awarded one along with five others that year.
When I arrived in the fall of my first year at Macalester I learned that the Twin Cities had the second largest Tibetan population in the United States, second only to New York City. Through opportunities related to the community service office and the Tibetan American Foundation of Minnesota (TAFM) I was able to tutor Tibetan students at a Minneapolis high school. While I very much enjoyed the tutoring program, I realized that it served a limited segment of the Tibetan population. I sought the advice a Tibetan community leader about some of the community's other needs. He suggested finding ways to help elders develop computer skills to both assimilate into American culture and remain connected to their own. With this idea and the Phillips scholarship in mind, I applied to the scholarship and was fortunate to be one of the recipients.
The summer between my junior and senior year I taught the computer class to a total of 10 Tibetan elders. The class was a success for both the students and myself. I was able to help equip the Tibetans with computer skills they may otherwise never have attained; and in addition, I was able to better understand how hard it must be to be an immigrant or refugee in a culture that is vastly different from your own, especially if you do not speak the language.
The Phillips Scholarship experience further developed my interest in Tibetan culture, as I was able to take the only class on Tibet, 'From Tibet To America,' offered at Macalester. Furthermore, at the end of my senior year I was awarded a Watson Fellowship, which funds a year of independent travel outside the U.S after graduation. For this project, through the medium of photography, I documented the ways in which Tibetans are adapting to their host countries and at the same time celebrating and preserving their cultural heritage. I did so by traveling around the Tibetan Diaspora: Canada, Switzerland, Sweden, New Zealand, India, and Tibet (China). I have continued my commitment to Tibet as I currently work for the International Campaign for Tibet, the chief Tibet support group in the world.
Though my exposure to Tibetans first came from India, my interest in their culture would not have been developed or acted upon had I not come to Macalester and the Twin Cities. In the end, I must say that the chance to have had these opportunities makes me truly thankful and appreciative.
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