Do Something for Tibetan Children - Visiting Dickey Orphanage

Dickey Orphanage in Lhasa is home to around 90 children. The orphanage was founded by a middle-aged Tibetan woman, Tamdrin Dadhon who sold her family business, gathered the proceeds of the teahouse and with 300,000 Yuan and a lot of courage, started Dickey´s Orphanage in Lhasa, Tibet´s capital, on September 10th 2002. In Tibetan, ‘Dickey’ means ‘fine’ and ‘happiness’. At the moment Dickey´s is home to 73 children. Most of them are between six and nine years of age. The youngest is two months old. They all get lodging, tuition and medical aid.

Because a lot of the children don´t know where or when they were born, September 10th is everybody´s birthday – a big party! The parents of these children died because of illness or accidents. Some children were abandoned because their parents saw no way out of their miserable situation or fled to neighbouring countries. At this orphanage, the children found a new home and started their new life.

As Dickey Orphanage in Lhasa is a self-motivated action, no official government grants. Many kind local business men and international donations give financial support to the good woman, Amala Dadhon so that she can support the big family. Except that, the only way to sustain the orphanage is the income from her teahouse.

However, the donations are not constant and stable, and only drop in the ocean for the future of these children need long-term support and more and more orphans join in this big family. Besides, the orphanage also has some staff, including the schoolbus driver and a Tibetan teacher.

Even it is really very hard for Tamdrin Dadhon to keep this sweet home for the children, she still tries every best to improve the living condition for the children. In 2006, more orphans came to Dickey. But the rooms she had could not accommodate more for rooms she rented as the orphanage were quite small. Sometimes a single bed was shared by two children. So she decided to build a proper home for the poor kids though facing too much pressure. She made a loan from the bank to build a new orphanage on a land of about 2000m². To minimize the costs, all orphanage staff were working with the constructors.

The next year, new orphanage was finished. They moved to their new home that has a capacity to house 200 children. The children were very happy with the new location and the most important thing for them is that every child could have their own bed though there is a lack of heating system and many other infrastructure facilities for Tamdrin Dadhon has to try to save to pay back the loan.

With the Dickey Orphanage in Lhasa getting bigger and bigger, more and more problems are coming to this big family. Tuition and education are the urgent problems for them. Therefore, they are still in need of assistance of merciful people. And we hope they can get help from charity organizations and official departments.