On April 14 2010, the prefecture of Yushu where 93% of the population is Tibetan, was hit by a devastating earthquake, which destroyed entire villages. Several of these Tibetan communities were transferred to modern settlements far away from major urban centres, uprooted from their cultural and social context.
In shops as well as in schools, Chinese is the main language. More and more, children aged between 6 and 12 struggle to speak the Tibetan language and many have lost any familiarity with the grammar of their language of origin because their teachers are often young and lack experience.
In 2013 we organized courses on teaching methods for 179 teachers of Yushu and formative internships in primary and secondary schools. In ASIA we have decided to focus not only on the Tibetan language with training courses on the techniques of traditional teaching techniques, grammar and writing, but also on the bilingual education of mathematics.
In 2015 we trained 60 Tibetan teachers with courses in Tibetan on grammar, poetry and literature as well as Tibetan history and calligraphy.