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A Groundbreaking Summer
CWRU students rebuild school playground at Tibetan school in India
CWRU students Margaux Johnstone, left, and Tenzin Palmo renovated a Tibetan school playground in Dharamshala, India.Growing up as a third-generation Tibetan refugee in Dharamshala, India, Tenzin Palmo attended a Tibetan boarding school where the playground was a vital community hub for students to gather and build friendships.
But over the years she saw deteriorated playgrounds at other nearby Tibetan schools in Dharamshala, which is in the foothills of the Himalayas and home to the Tibetan government in exile.
“I always want to give back to my community,” said Palmo, a Case Western Reserve senior majoring in psychology and business management. “I thought, maybe this is something I can work on [and] impact the upcoming generation.”
As a high school senior, Palmo led a project that included a playground renovation at a school in the same Tibetan Children’s Village network of schools as the one she attended.
Students at a Tibetan school in India quickly began using the slide and other equipment after a playground renovation this summer led by CWRU students Tenzin Palmo and Margaux Johnstone.
This summer, she and another CWRU student, Margaux Johnstone, took on a bigger project: repairing and rebuilding a playground at a network school for students in grades 1-12.
They received a grant from Projects for Peace, a global program that provides funding to college and university students developing community-centered responses to pressing issues.
Palmo and Johnstone spent more than a month in Dharamshala, first learning what students wanted in a playground, then buying materials and equipment and hiring local workers. Working around monsoons, they extended the playground space, fixed broken rungs on a monkey climber and installed a new bright-red spiral slide and four seesaws. They also provided students with sports equipment including basketballs.
“Every time we finished work, we would stay an extra hour and chat with the kids,” said Johnstone, a Seattle native and third-year international studies and medical anthropology major.
And on the day Palmo watched fifth graders joyfully race out to use the new equipment, she was filled with appreciation for everyone who made the project a reality.
“To see [the students] have all these facilities and find a sense of community in that space,” she said, “I was just really grateful.”
