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Sabriye Tenberken | |
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 Sabriye Tenberken at kanthari international | |
| Born | 1970 (age 52–53) |
| Nationality | German |
Sabriye Tenberken (born 1970) is a German tibetologist and co-founder of the organisation Braille Without Borders.
Sabriye was born in Cologne, West Germany. She lost her sight slowly as a child due to retinitis pigmentosa, [1] and her parents took her to many places so she would store up many visual memories, before becoming totally blind by the age of 12. She studied Central Asian Studies at Bonn University. In addition to Mongolian and modern Chinese, she studied modern and classical Tibetan in combination with Sociology and Philosophy.
As no blind student had ever before ventured to enroll in these kinds of studies, Sabriye could not fall back on the experience of previous students, so she developed her own methods of studying her course of study. By 1992 Sabriye had developed Tibetan Braille, which later became the official reading and writing system for the blind in Tibet. Tibetan Braille is based on German Braille, modified to accommodate the Tibetan script. For example, Tibetan ka, kha, ga, nga are written with the standard Braille letters for k, c, g and lowered g. It was submitted for examination to a Tibetan scholar, who found it to be readily understandable, simple, and easy to learn.[ citation needed ]
In 1997, Sabriye travelled to Tibet alone in order to assess the situation of the blind there. Returning in 1998, she founded the Centre for the Blind in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, to educate blind people, together with Paul Kronenberg whom she had met there the year before. [2] Before that, most blind children were hidden away from the world by their family members who were reluctant to send them to school. The school started with five children, with Sabriye initially teaching the children herself, as well as serving as coordinator and advisor. She then began training native Tibetans as teachers, selecting and supervising all staff-members of the centre.
The project's progress was not without difficulties and setbacks. Sabriye was able eventually to turn over the running of the centre to one of her former students who trained as a teacher.
In 2017, her visa was no longer extended, and the school was threatened with closure. [3]
In 1998 Paul joined Sabriye in establishing the Project for the Blind, Tibet. In September, 2002, the name was changed to Braille Without Borders, BWB. In addition to the school in Lhasa BWB runs a vocational training centre for blind adults with a farm and cheese factory near Shigatse.
In 2009, Sabriye Tenberken and her partner Paul Kronenberg also began kanthari international (name intentionally spelled with all letters in lower case) in a village near Thiruvananthapuram, India, They also established an International School for Development and Project Planning near Trivandrum, Kerala, India. The school focuses on discovering and developing the hidden talents of persons from all over the world who often are socially neglected, especially because of disabilities, and empowering them to be innovators and leaders.
Tibet is a region in the central part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about 2,500,000 km2 (970,000 sq mi). It is the homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as the Monpa, Tamang, Qiang, Sherpa and Lhoba peoples and, since the 20th century, considerable numbers of Han Chinese and Hui settlers. Since the annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China in 1951, the entire plateau has been under the administration of the People's Republic of China. Tibet is divided administratively into the Tibet Autonomous Region, and parts of the Qinghai and Sichuan provinces. Tibet is also constitutionally claimed by the Republic of China as the Tibet Area since 1912.
Alexandra David-Néel was a Belgian–French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist, anarchist, opera singer, and writer. She is most known for her 1924 visit to Lhasa, Tibet, when it was forbidden to foreigners. David-Néel wrote over 30 books about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels, including Magic and Mystery in Tibet, which was published in 1929. Her teachings influenced the beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, the popularisers of Eastern philosophy Alan Watts and Ram Dass, and the esotericist Benjamin Creme.
Lhasa is the urban center of the prefecture-level Lhasa City and the administrative capital of Tibet Autonomous Region in southwest China. The inner urban area of Lhasa City is equivalent to the administrative borders of Chengguan District, which is part of the wider prefectural Lhasa City.
While the Tibetan plateau has been inhabited since pre-historic times, most of Tibet's history went unrecorded until the introduction of Tibetan Buddhism around the 6th century. Tibetan texts refer to the kingdom of Zhangzhung as the precursor of later Tibetan kingdoms and the originators of the Bon religion. While mythical accounts of early rulers of the Yarlung Dynasty exist, historical accounts begin with the introduction of Buddhism from India in the 6th century and the appearance of envoys from the unified Tibetan Empire in the 7th century. Following the dissolution of the empire and a period of fragmentation in the 9th-10th centuries, a Buddhist revival in the 10th–12th centuries saw the development of three of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism.
The foreign relations of Tibet are documented from the 7th century onward, when Buddhism was introduced by missionaries from India and Nepal. The Tibetan Empire fought with the Tang dynasty for control over territory dozens of times, despite peace marriage twice. Tibet was conquered by the Mongol Empire and that changed its internal system of government, introducing the Dalai Lamas, as well as subjecting Tibet to political rule under the Yuan dynasty. Tibetan foreign relations during the Ming dynasty are opaque, with Tibet being either a tributary state or under full Chinese sovereignty. But by the 18th century, the Qing dynasty indisputably made Tibet a subject. In the early 20th century, after a successful invasion, Britain established a trading relationship with Tibet and was permitted limited diplomatic access to "Outer Tibet", basically Shigatse and Lhasa. Britain supported Tibetan autonomy under the 13th Dalai Lama but did not contest Chinese suzerainty; while "Inner Tibet", areas such as Amdo and Kham with mixed Chinese and Tibetan populations to the east and north, remained nominally under the control of the Republic of China although that control was seldom effective. Although the sovereignty of Tibet was unrecognized, Tibet was courted in unofficial visits from Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the United States during and after World War II. The foreign relations of Tibet ended with the Seventeen Point Agreement that formalized Chinese sovereignty over most all of political Tibet in 1951.
Kham is one of the three traditional Tibetan regions, the others being Amdo in the northeast, and Ü-Tsang in central Tibet. The original residents of Kham are called Khampas, and were governed locally by chieftains and monasteries. Kham presently covers a land area distributed between five regions in China, most of it in Tibet Autonomous Region and Sichuan, with smaller portions located within Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan provinces.
Braille Without Borders (BWB) is an international organisation for the blind in developing countries. It was founded in Lhasa, Tibet, by Sabriye Tenberken and Paul Kronenberg in 1998.
Jetsun Pema is the sister of the 14th Dalai Lama. For 42 years she was the President of the Tibetan Children's Villages (TCV) school system for Tibetan refugee students.
Tsering Woeser is a Tibetan writer, activist, blogger, poet and essayist.
Blindsight is a 2006 documentary film directed by Lucy Walker and produced by Sybil Robson Orr for Robson Entertainment. It premiered at 2006 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in the category Real to Reel.
Tibetan Braille is the Braille alphabet for writing the Tibetan language. It was invented in 1992 by German social worker Sabriye Tenberken. It is based on German braille, with some extensions from international usage. As in print, the vowel a is not written.
Rosemary Mahoney is an American writer. She has published six books of narrative non-fiction and numerous magazine articles. For the American Spectator, Christopher Caldwell wrote, "Mahoney has an effortlessly pretty prose style and an uncanny eye. .. . a literary talent that amounts to brilliance."
Hannah Royle Taylor, known as Annie Royle Taylor, was an English explorer and Evangelical missionary to Tibet. She was the first Western woman known to have visited Tibet. She attempted to reach the "forbidden" city of Lhasa in 1892–1893.
Prostitution in Tibet is thought to have existed for centuries. Testimonies of its existence were provided by outside visitors in the first half of the twentieth century. According to the British writer Christopher Hale, due to the practice of polyandry in Tibet, many women were unable to find a husband and moved to villages and towns, where they fell into prostitution. Their clients came from the caravans crossing the Tibetan plateau, and also from the monasteries.
Tibet under Qing rule refers to the Qing dynasty's rule over Tibet from 1720 to 1912. The Qing rulers incorporated Tibet into the empire along with other Inner Asia territories, although the actual extent of the Qing dynasty's control over Tibet during this period has been the subject of political debate. The Qing called Tibet a fanbu, fanbang or fanshu, which has usually been translated as "vassal", "vassal state", or "borderlands", along with areas like Xinjiang and Mongolia. Like the preceding Yuan dynasty, the Manchus of the Qing dynasty exerted military and administrative control over Tibet, while granting it a degree of political autonomy.
Lhasa is a prefecture-level city, one of the main administrative divisions of the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It covers an area of 29,274 square kilometres (11,303 sq mi) of rugged and sparsely populated terrain. Its urban center is Lhasa, with around 300,000 residents, which mostly corresponds with the administrative Chengguan District, while its suburbs extend into Doilungdêqên District and Dagzê District. The consolidated prefecture-level city contains additional five, mostly rural, counties.
The Convention of Lhasa, officially the Convention Between Great Britain and Thibet, was a treaty signed in 1904 between Tibet and Great Britain, in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, then a protectorate of the Qing dynasty. It was signed following the British expedition to Tibet of 1903–1904, a military expedition led by Colonel Francis Younghusband, and was followed by the Anglo-Chinese Convention of 1906.
Tiffany Brar is an Indian community service worker who became blind as an infant due to oxygen toxicity. Brar is the founder of the Jyothirgamaya Foundation, a non-profit organization that teaches life skills to blind people of all ages. She is a trainer, a campaigner for disability awareness and an advocates for an inclusive society.
Jyothirgamaya Foundation is a nonprofit organization, based in Thiruvananthapuram Kerala which is actively involved in the empowerment of persons with visual impairment founded in 2015 by Tiffany Brar. The project started as a mobile blind school in 2012. Tiffany Brar herself, traveled through rural areas in public transport in search of blind people of all ages in rural areas in India, with the aim of bringing out of the four walls of their house, to which they are confined, and brings a new light to their eyes, which has nothing to do with their eyesight. Jyothirgamaya Foundation holds Special consultative status with United Nations.
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