DHARAMSHALA: The Department of Education organised a five-day workshop for Tibetan School Guidance Counselors in Dharamshala from 7 – 11 Oct in its effort to address the academic and psychological challenges faced by children in Tibetan schools.

Inaugurating the workshop, Education Secretary Topgyal Tsering stressed the importance and need of guidance counselors in the Tibetan schools as children face myriad challenges.

“The children need a professional who they could trust and confide the challenges they are facing and help them deal with it,” he said, urging guidance counselors to be upfront and proactively engage school authorities and parents to address their psychological issues.”

He also said that the counselors have a significant role in providing mental health education to the students apart from career education.

The education department has invited resource persons who have expertise in both modern and Buddhist psychological studies. “The whole idea of including topics from both modern and Buddhist psychologies is to learn the best practices from both schools of thoughts,” Mrs Donkar Wangmo, chief counselor at the education department said.

The resource persons for the workshop are Mrs Usha Anand and Mrs Astha Sharma from India Expression (CBSE Empanelled Agency), Dr. Jitendar Nagpal, Director of India Expression, and Geshe Jampel Dakpa, principal of the College for Higher Tibetan Studies at Sarah near Dharamshala.

The resource persons from India Expression would cover topics such as “the alternatives to corporal punishment;  the scourge of bullying and its intervention; understanding the realms of child abuse; prevention and intervention strategies (POCSO Act); substance abuse in adolescents, causes, impact and prevention (NDPS Act); early identification issues – needs assessments across the development span; applied psychometric and enriching family – school partnership for holistic development.”

While Geshe Jampel Dakpa spoke on the training of mind and meditation.

The participants, including 15 Counselors, who participated in the workshop were from Tibetan Children’s Village, Sambhota Tibetan School Society, Department of Home (Tibetan Career Center) and Department of Education.

This workshop was funded by SOIR-IM, Sweden.