Lotus Culture Center Project Development Plan

Rationale for establishing the Lotus Culture Center

This project assists young people who live in Beijing and come from many different ethnic backgrounds. They all have a low-level of education and are either working in low-paying service jobs or are looking for employment in Beijing. The Center will help them to improve their education and skill-set to give them a better chance of finding good employment, and be able to provide stable support for their families, who mainly live in poverty-stricken minority areas of China. The students are hard-working and studious, and very keen to improve their knowledge and skills to enrich and improve themselves.。

Background to the project

There are approximately four million minority workers in Beijing. To give an example, in the Majiamei restaurant in Tuanjiehu some 90% of the sixty service staff come from minority regions of China and have an average age of 22. Because the Majiamei restaurant has a lot of foreign customers the service staff are very keen to study English and hope to improve their own competitiveness in the employment market. However as their monthly salaries are very low they do not have the capacity to pay to attend classes at English language schools, take internet classes or do on-the-job training.

Education should give all people equal opportunities for the future, however who will give these young minority people the chance to obtain a proper education? The Lotus Culture Center, in planning for the last three years, is now using the efforts of volunteers teachers and managers to provide these young people with training in basic skills。

Summary of project

After planning for the last three years, Mipham started the Lotus Culture Centre project in November 2009 with the help of several friends. Mipham has used his own funds to rent a small hutong in Beijing and undertake some renovations to turn it into a school. The costs of setting up and running the Center have been met from his own pocket. The school has very basic facilities but is bright and clean. With the help of six volunteer teachers, from the United States, Canada, English, Qingdao, Hubei and Sichuan, the school currently is teaching English to 57 students enrolled from a number of different minorities, including Mongolian, Hui, Tibetan, Yi and Qiang. The students are either unemployed, or work as service staff at restaurants, sales staff, singers or dancers。

The course includes English oral practice, art appreciation, Chinese language classes, etc. In the future we hope to establish classes on cocktail making, management, etiquette, DJ-ing, etc, Under the principle that it is better to teach someone how to fish than just give them fish to eat, we hope that these low-income workers can be given free training to allow them to improve their competitiveness in future employment opportunities, and improve the quality of their lives.

Management of the program Manager：Mipham Area of responsibility：In charge of teaching, recruiting students and arranging volunteer teachers.。 Teaching staff：We have recruited volunteer teachers with good experience in teaching English to foreign students. Students：At the moment most students are mainly recruited through word of mouth from other students. We are not yet using the Internet to recruit more students, due to the following reasons: 1，The school is not large, and currently the number of students already uses most of the resources so there is no capacity to expand the number of students; 2，The school’s funds are limited, we do not yet have large source of revenue.

Source of funding Currently the funding for the school has been provided by Mipham. Expenses Rent: 5000 RMB/month Water and electricity: 1000 RMB/month Student supplies, teaching materials: 1000 RMB/month Teacher transport costs, food costs Student scholarships

Future of the project Apart from training minority workers living in Beijing, we want to mobilize the skills and resources of the students to give cultural displays using their own cultural backgrounds to a foreign audience. Any people with an interest in minority culture and wanting to deepen their understanding can use the Lotus Cultural Center and its students.

The Lotus Cultural Center is a very small window, a small stage, but through the passion of various people whether they are students or teachers, we hope the Lotus Center can promote the understanding of different minorities, and hope that every person will be able to open their own doors, and use our resources to study, to give and to understand different cultures and open their hearts like a lotus flower.