From June to August 2011, The Pendeba Society will be conducting a full survey of 323 pendebas who received trainings between 1994 and 2011. The purpose of this survey is to build a detailed database for pendebas, identify and evaluate the impacts those pendebas have had on their communities, and to determine key focuses for The Pendeba Society’s future projects in QNNP.
Teamed up by Tsering Norbu, LIU Rongkun and Norbu Dundup, a Tingri native who just joined The Pendeba Society for this project, the survey officially started on June 6, 2011 by first looking for pendebas residing in neighboring townships and villages in Tingri County. The first day’s results were very positive and we have got full profiles of 6 pendebas who attended the pendeba trainings in 2010 and 2007. These pendebas include the village leader of Enba Village of Zhaguo Township and women’s leaders of Banglai and Zhaga Villages. And from June 7 to 8, we have got another 19 pendebas’ information from Shegar Town’s Linsa, Qulai, Maxia Villages, and others. These pendebas all expressed their appreciation of being a pendeba and keen interest in participating in The Pendeba Society’s future trainings.
The Pendeba Society also learnt much from the conversation with these pendebas in terms of their attitudes towards the Pendeba Program and their current needs such as building river banks and farmland palings, and developing eco-agriculture. And these needs will be focuses of future pendeba trainings. In the meantime, The Pendeba Society was also able to deepen its understandings of the regions’ economic and social development status by visiting communities one by one and therefore can devise projects and programs that suit local communities’ needs and hence better serve the region.
We believe that this survey will bring about favorable outcomes for both local communities and the Society, and from then on we can pass on the spirit of the Pendeba, namely volunteerism, in the Mt. Everest region.