About Us 

Our aim is to estab­lish an online com­munity that will pre­serve, pro­mote, and cel­eb­rate Tibetan lan­guage and cul­ture. Mov­ing bey­ond tra­di­tion­al tools like text­books, we hope to expand oppor­tun­it­ies to learn Tibetan through cre­at­ing var­ied, rich, and enga­ging exper­i­ences. 

We aim to offer a vari­ety of learn­ing exper­i­ences like bite-size social media con­tent, one-to-one online les­sons with nat­ive speak­ers, You­Tube videos, and blog posts. These addi­tion­al formats offer flex­ib­il­ity, help keep learners engaged, and improve con­ver­sa­tion, read­ing, and listen­ing com­pre­hen­sion. 

Designed to sup­port learners of all levels and back­grounds, includ­ing mem­bers of the dia­spora, we believe our online pro­vi­sion provides the tools required for learn­ing and sus­tain­ing engage­ment with Tibetan. 

We will track out­puts – namely par­ti­cip­a­tion and engage­ment with our social media plat­forms, and people enrolled in and attend­ing our sum­mer school courses and online lan­guages classes. In order to assess wheth­er or not our con­tent and courses are meet­ing the needs of our user, we will use a blend of focus groups, feed­back sur­veys, and les­son observations.

Our Team

 Tenzin Choephel

  Founder, CEO

A nat­ive Tibetan, Ten­zin has taught Tibetan lan­guage in a range of edu­ca­tion­al set­tings in India and the UK, includ­ing Thosam­ling Nun­nery, Dharam­sala; School of Ori­ent­al and Afric­an Stud­ies (SOAS), Uni­ver­sity of Lon­don; and at the Uni­ver­sity of Oxford. Inspired by his own exper­i­ence of teach­ing, he developed and pub­lished the Tibetan lan­guage text­book The Manu­al of Authen­t­ic Tibetan in 2018. The Manu­al moves away from the tra­di­tion­al Gram­mar Trans­la­tion meth­od, often employed in the teach­ing of Tibetan, towards a func­tion­al approach through focus­ing on what learners want to do with the lan­guage (i.e. focus­ing on real-life situ­ations and goals, such as order­ing food at a res­taur­ant).  Identi­fy­ing a clear need and enthu­si­asm for enriched Tibetan lan­guage resources, Ten­zin launched EasyT­ibetan – ini­tially an Ins­tagram page — in 2019 with daily Tibetan lan­guage posts, includ­ing vocab­u­lary and spelling exer­cises, snap­shots of Tibetan his­tory and cul­ture, and pro­nun­ci­ation record­ings. The page gained over five-thou­sand fol­low­ers with­in its first two months and now has over twelve-thou­sand fol­low­ers (and counting).

 

  Rachael Griffiths

   Co-Founder, Programme Director

Rachael has been study­ing Tibetan since 2007; BA Study of Reli­gions and His­tory (SOAS); MPhil in Tibetan and Him­alay­an Stud­ies (Uni­ver­sity of Oxford); DPhil in Ori­ent­al Stud­ies (Uni­ver­sity of Oxford). While study­ing her Mas­ters, she was sur­prised by the lim­ited tools avail­able to aid lan­guage acquis­i­tion (aside from a hand­ful of lan­guage text­books and online trans­la­tion pages) and is excited to be involved with a pro­ject which aims to rem­edy this lacuna. 

An exper­i­enced Pro­ject Man­ager work­ing in edu­ca­tion, Rachael has expert­ise in devel­op­ing and over­see­ing edu­ca­tion­al pro­grammes, work­ing with a range of stake­hold­ers, and review­ing out­puts to ensure qual­ity and learn­ing object­ives are being met. She is able to pro­duce high-qual­ity deliv­er­ables that meet or exceed timeline and budget­ary tar­gets. Rachael is also an exper­i­enced teach­er with over four years of exper­i­ence and train­ing in both sub­ject-spe­cif­ic and Eng­lish-lan­guage (TEFL qual­i­fied) teaching.

 

Michael Elison 

Software Developer

Michael is a pro­fes­sion­al Java Developer, as well as Full Stack Developer with exper­i­ence in HTML, CSS, JavaS­cript, Mon­goDB, SQL. He also has some exper­i­ence in Python and Ruby. He has been pas­sion­ate about pro­gram­ming for many years. 

He is also a resource­ful Pro­ject Man­ager. He began his IT career as a cre­at­ive IT Man­ager at Penta Money, that he devised a concept of an auto­mated on-line e‑currency exchanger, laid it out for the team of coders, and super­vised the works. He then went on to cre­ate a very soph­ist­ic­ated web­site devel­op­ing the sys­tem of an on-line shop with a cli­ent regis­tra­tion option, that com­prised a com­plex multi-layered refer­ral algorithm and cal­cu­la­tion of cli­ents’ refer­ral income, and their on-line per­son­al account dis­play­ing their pur­chases, their cli­ent bases, and break-down of their income. 

Michael has a great interest in Tibetan Lan­guage and Cul­ture. In 2019, he gradu­ated from the Uni­ver­sity of Oxford as a Mas­ter of Philo­sophy in Tibetan and Him­alay­an Stud­ies. For his Master’s thes­is, Michael con­duc­ted research on the prac­tice of Dream Yoga in Bon in com­par­is­on with Tibetan Buddhist tra­di­tions.   Dur­ing his time at Oxford, Michael sub­stan­tially improved his know­ledge of the Tibetan lan­guage, his­tory and tra­di­tions.   Over the sum­mer break, he went to an exile com­munity in Dharam­shala, India, to improve his Tibetan and to bet­ter famil­i­ar­ise him­self with Tibetan cul­ture and tra­di­tions.  Michael also stud­ied Clas­sic­al Tibetan Lan­guage at SOAS, the Uni­ver­sity of London

 

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