A New Concept Of Virtual Foundation Project
Designed To Bring Together Community Actions The World Over
During the summer of 2001, the Virtual Foundation Japan dispatched a mission to Nepal to visit the village of Kot-timal village, Kanpur VDC of Kabre district, Nepal, where the Thangka Painting School is located in order to give the final overall assessment of the feasibility of installing a communication satellite ground station terminal at a location in the village designated by the school. This will provide a reliable and direct access for the village leaders and art students to the world of Internet e-mail communication in the spring of 2002.
A Chance for Japanese Citizens
to Help Fellow Asian Friends
in Need in Rural Nepal
Nepal Projects for 2002

Universities, High Schools and Other Educational Institutions
Long-Distance Education, Cultural Exchange, and Mutual Assistance

Projects Now Fully Under Way

Seminar at the Ryukoku University

Let us help make the thangka painting art school a success , which was started as a unique means by which the young villagers can make enough income to remain in Kot-timal and learn more about their own religious and cultural heritage.
Our effort to help make this work will begin with a set of actions which will help the school construct a new marketing channel for their traditional art products many of which are known to be of marketable quality in the opinion of the instructors.
In order to achieve this goal, the following arrangements are being made by the Virtual Foundation Japan in collaboration with the Himalaya Light Foundation and the Teachers Without Borders.

The Virtual Foundation Japan is finally coming to a point where it can actually install and launch the system of two-way e-mail communication system free from language barriers in the Kot-timal village, whereupon the instructors, students and villagers can freely communicate interactively with the outside world introducing the school activities and showing the thangka paintings being created by them. You can see the actual communication portal by clicking the shown below

Open Internet Dialogue with Nepal Himalaya's rural communities


Projects Currently in the Fire
[1] A multilingual meeting place/forum on the Internet

Let us construct an interactive meeting place on the Internet free from language barriers , where you can use your own language to express yourself. First, we shall begin with one for a joint US-Japan team of young students talking with their Nepali counterparts, and expand it into a regional network as time goes by.

[2] Eco-Trekking Tours of the Himalaya Foothills in Nepal

We are planning on offering unique ecotours of our own in Nepal Himalayas which have never been commercially offered by tour agencies.


Projects Already Completed

DONORS: Nanei Tamura (individual donor), Takemi Ichimura (individual donor), Student groups (credit-earning seminar participants), Yutaka and Yoshiko Okamoto (individual donor), Hisako and Torao Kato (individual donor), International Soroptimist Musashino (civic organization), Kuge Michiko Embrodary (ethnic art specialist), and a group of citizens in Kansai district.
Reports on Project Activities

Man and Society in East Asia
A Background Information Guide for a Deeper Insight into East Asia and VFJ's Projects
VFJ Contact Address
E-Mail Us


Japan's New Volunteerism


- January 26, 2002 -
What Comes Next Now That They Have Solar Power Systems?

Scattered across the mountainous regions of the Himalaya foothills, live the people in small villages, some dotting the precipitous mountain slopes while others sitting on top of lofty hills, leading an austere life dependent upon hillside dry farms for staple grains and beans, with Buddhist monasteries dotting the scene which function both as their spiritual center and communal meeting place.
VFJ's Tangin village project was to help install a solar panel with which to light up the monastery and the allied buildings. The village is located in the remotest of the remote Northwestern region of Nepal, some 3700 meters above sea level, looking down on Tibet to the north and India to the south.
The Tangin village lives a near subsistence life with little cash income. There is no money for fuel, so people go out and dig up the resin-rich conifer trees for both fuel and lighting, traditionally crating serious health problems due to the confined living space in the cold winter months. The Humla district, in the northwestern edge of which Tangin lies, has long suffered from this tree-cutting practice despite its rich forest cover, and, people, as shown in the picture, have been forced to go ever further away from their villages for tree cutting and root digging. The installation of the solar lighting system in the fall of 1998, made possible by a collective donation of private citizens and the students of the Chiba University of Commerce in Tokyo, changed all this by eliminating the need to burn wood for lighting any more.
We visited tangin during August, 1999, spending almost a week in trekking seldom used mountain pathes, but upon arrival, we were greeted by the villagers, most adults and their children (see the picture) who expressed gratitude for what was done. We were especially touched by the words of a nun (picture) who expressed her happiness to see no more insects flying into their death by burning themselves by the flaming wood sticks. Most of the Japanese consider themselves Buddhists, but, somehow insects are simply regarded as pests most of the time. It made us think about the distance between our two Buddhist cultures.
The cultural exchange notwithstanding, the simple act of assistance of providing a solar lighting system failed to solve any of the fundamental socioeconomic problems of this remote village. The young boys who spoke some English told us there was absolutely nothing to do during the long winter lasting nearly half of the year, and, the meager dry farming on the mountain slopes isn't nearly enough to provide a sustainable economic basis for the future of the young people.
Representatives of the Virtual Foundation Japan, upon return from this Tangin trip, also went to a highland village of Kot-timal in the Kavre district east of Kathmandu to visit a thangka painting school then shut down due to lack of fund. Though situated in a deep valley one day away from Kathmandu by a long bus ride and trekking rest of the way, Kot-timal was still a much closer location from Kathmandu, and lent itself to the testing of a high-tech communication tool we had in mind for extremely remote areas.

Thus, a blue print was drawn in Tokyo by VFJ and Okamoto International Affairs Research Institute to design a satellite-aided communication system free from language barriers and linked to the Internet e-mail system. During the summer of 2001, therefore, another mission was sent to Kot-timal village and successfully ascertained the technical as well as social feasibility of installing a ground station terminal there for such interactive communication. The Thangka Painting School was reopened in the early months of 2001 aided by Japanese donors including the students of the Ryukoku University, and
by the spring of 2002, therefore, this project will be fully operational with Japanese and American children and young students taking part with their parents to exchange information on their respective school life, family life-styles, and many other things they want to show and tell aided by video-streamed images. It will also become possible for the parents to directly purchase the artworks from the art school students.
This way, both the Japanese and American students and their parents can not only learn a lot about their counterparts in East Asia but, in the process, also contribute to the Kot-timal village's sustainable community development by materially helping the art students, and, who knows, by joining the future eco-trekking tours to personally visit the Nepali community which is only one day's distance from Kathmandu. In fact, as shown in the pictorial report of our visit of 2001, the tour will be a trekking of an ideal "unbeaten mountain trail" away from urban material civilization.
The Virtual Foundation Japan is now prepared to lauch this Nepal project in the spring of 2002. Among the first-stage project components are, (1) the educational and cultural exchange project involving the children and young students of Japan, U.S. and Nepal as mentioned above. Once this is fully under way, we would like to invite their parents and elders to take part in the program mainly helping their respective youngsters to supplement and better organize their presentations of respective cultures, life-styles, and heritages.

December 1, 2001
Yutaka Okamoto
The Virtual Foundation Japan

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