RINCHEN DHARLO, PRESIDENT OF TIBET FUND AND FORMER NORTH AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVE TO THE DALAI LAMA, TO SPEAK AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

    On November 11 at 7:30 pm in Giffels Auditorium on the campus of the University of Arkansas, Rinchen Dharlo will present a lecture with slides entitled, "Tibet:  Then and Now."

    The lecture and Mr. Dharlo's trip to Fayetteville is sponsored by The Fulbright College Honors Program.

    The lecture is free and open to the public.  After the lecture, a Q & A session will follow and provide the audience an unparalleled opportunity to ask questions concerning the past and future of Tibet, as well as questions about His Holiness the Dalai Lama, whom Mr. Dharlo has closely assisted for decades.  

    Mr. Dharlo's visit is yet another essential component of our year-long run-up to the Dalai Lama's visit in May.

    Born in Southwestern Tibet in Nyanang, a small town that was once a major trade center between Tibet and Nepal, Mr. Dharlo and his family escaped Tibet in 1959, the same year that the Dalai Lama left.

    Mr. Dharlo began working for the Tibetan Government-in-Exile in 1972.  From 1978 to 1987, he directed the Office of Tibet and was Representative in Nepal for the Dalai Lama.

    In 1986, Mr. Dharlo was transferred to New York City, where he was the Representative to the Americas for the Dalai Lama.  He also headed the Office of Tibet in New York, which is the official agent for His Holiness and the Tibetan Government- in-Exile.

    In addition to these jobs, Mr. Dharlo has worked extensively for the betterment of the Tibetan people.  He co-chaired in 1992 and 1993 the Tibetan-US Resettlement Project, which resettled 1000 Tibetans refugees in 21 cities across the United States. He served on the steering committee of the Global Forum of Spiritual Parliamentary in 1988, and he was a board member of the Temple of Understanding, a global interfaith initiative.  He has also served on the board of the International Campaign for Tibet, a non-profit organization that monitors and promotes human rights in Tibet.  He also served as a liaison between the Tibetans living in exile in North America and the Government-in-Exile in Dharamsala.

    Currently, Mr. Dharlo is President of Tibet Fund, where he co-ordinates the office's efforts to help the Tibetan people living both in exile and within Tibet by providing and administrating financial as well as other kinds of support for education, health, economic and community development, emergency relief, and culural preservation and exchange.

    Mr. Dharlo has lived his life in service to the Tibetan people, and we will seldom have someone in our midst with such a wealth of knowledge about the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan people.

    If you have any interest in Tibet and its future, or if you are planning on seeing the Dalai Lama on May 11, 2011,  when he comes to the University of Arkansas, then you will not want to miss this talk and Q & A session with Rinchen Dharlo.