There is a serious shortage of well-trained professionals in the Tibetan exile community, especially in the healthcare field and particularly nurses, pharmacists, physiotherapists, dentists, and doctors. This shortage of Tibetan professionals has hindered the long-term development of the community. Having to compete with millions of non-Tibetans in their host country and pay exorbitant fees, means hardly any Tibetan student can dream of becoming a medical professional.
There are more than 130,000 Tibetans living in exile. One of the main priorities for His Holiness the Dalai Lama is that all Tibetans receive a high quality education as a means to achieve self-sufficency. The lack of scholarship opportunities or inadequate scholarship funds in professional fields such as information technology, engineering, and architecture, has made Tibetans dependent on outside providers for these services.
In order to meet this serious shortage, The Tibet Fund established the Professional Scholarship Program for Tibetan Refugee Students in South Asia in 2009. Initially, the Program focused on scholarships for students pursuing medical studies because at the time, there were only nine Tibetan doctors, no physiotherapists or dentists and only 19 registered nurses working in the CTA Department of Health's 59 medical centers in the Tibetan settlements in India and Nepal.
Students receiving more than $3,000 in scholarship support are required to commit to a minimum of two years of service in the Tibetan community upon completion of their studies. We hope to have 400 students working in the community in the next few years. The Tibet Fund has been able to significantly increase the number of students in the PSP and widen the program's scope to include other professions, such as engineering, science, architecture, business, and community development.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
