The first ACIP data entry centers were set up in traditional Tibetan monastic universities in south India, where courageous survivors of the invasion of Tibet, teachers and students, worked to rebuild their great institutions of learning, far from their native land. ACIP approached the heads of these institutions and together with them designed a program where young people who were not doing very well in the traditional course of study could be given a chance to learn to use computers, to help preserve the great books of their own culture.
Within a few years, a number of centers were up and running in several of the great monastic universities relocated in south India. The under-achieving students who had been selected to work in these centers were touch-typing over fifty words a minute, and were inputting thousands of pages of ancient woodblock prints every year. Their work was (and still is) limited to four hours a day, so as not to adversely affect their studies.
The work is designed in such a way that the participating students are paid for both their training and, later, their actual input work. For every dollar paid to the students, four dollars is paid into a food fund that helps feed all refugee students and teachers in their particular institution. The more productive the students are, the more food is available for their whole village. Everyone in the community, therefore, supports the students actively; their self-esteem has soared, and their grades as well. Their work has drawn the attention of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who has kindly visited a number of ACIP centers, constantly encouraging the staff of each center. We estimate that about 2,000 Tibetan refugees are fed primarily through the work done for the project by Tibetans themselves.
As the input centers in the traditional monastic colleges flourished, ACIP received requests from other refugee communities throughout south Asia, seeking to set up their own input centers. At the Hunsur Tibetan refugee camp in south India, for example, the local representative of the Tibetan refugee government helped design a program that became a model for others throughout the area.
The local refugee settlement office took responsibility to locate and procure a suitable site on which to build a new input center, and the cost of the building was donated by His Holiness's refugee council. ACIP agreed to supply all the computers, pay training and input salaries for a specified period, and provide specialists to teach touch-typing, software use, and elementary hardware repair.
The Hunsur center is now one of the most productive, and is staffed almost entirely by members of farming families who use their input salaries to supplement their income. A number of graduates of ACIP training centers have used their knowledge to obtain work in related fields, to start their own businesses, or even to do entry and cataloging work for institutions like the United States Library of Congress office in India. Young people who touched their first computer at an ACIP center in India are now directing international projects such as the St. Petersburg cataloging effort at the Library of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The Project has sought to assure that it provides an equal opportunity for men and women as it set up its input centers; in an open aptitude competition at the Hunsur center, for example, women secured about 90% of the available positions. Two major Tibetan refugee nunneries in north India are also participating in the Project. Over twenty ACIP input centers are now operating around the world.
As it seeks to preserve the endangered great books of Asian cultures, the Project has tried to lend a hand in preserving these cultures themselves. ACIP advisors have spent the last ten years helping native Tibetan refugee institutions throughout southern Asia not only to input these books on computer, but also to print them for the use of the refugee community. Much of the printing of traditional Tibetan literature in the refugee population of south Asia is now accomplished from ACIP data, supplied free of charge, for open distribution without copyright restrictions. Thousands of Tibetan refugee students are now using books printed and published by their own input centers that were started and supported by the Project.
Over the last two decades staff working for the Project have independently raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional funding to build elementary schools, design and construct water projects, provide student housing, raise public buildings, organize nutritional and medical projects, feed new refugees arriving from Tibet, introduce new agricultural techniques and programs, and institute and equip a wide variety of vocational training efforts.
Staff in the US over the last ten years have contributed thousands of hours of their time without pay; on more than one occasion it was the donation of their own salaries working at other jobs during the day that kept the Project going. All this was done in the spirit of providing information that is free in every respect: ACIP materials and software programs are all supplied to any party who wishes them, without charge.
Texts can be downloaded freely from this web site, or requested from ACIP on CD-ROMs and other media. (And even our request for donations to help cover our cost of the materials is waived for users for whom a donation would be a hardship, such as those living in countries at war, or Tibetan refugees themselves.) Thousands of pages of ACIP data have appeared, both in the original Tibetan and in new translations, in readings used in classrooms throughout the United States and the world in general. For an idea of who uses our data, see the two pie charts in the appendices, which give a snapshot of our user population, both in America and throughout the world.
Our operating principle is to obtain funds from foundations and other institutions and individuals who feel our work is important, and then to supply the results of our work free to the individuals who need to use it, many of whom would not be able to pay if we charged what it costs to produce these materials.
The ACIP South Asia Field Office near Mysore, India, supplies great books to the refugee community not only on computer diskette, but also in copies printed from ACIP data, upon demand. The Project has reached a point where we have input a major portion of sacred Tibetan literature that got out of Tibet with the refugees, and we are now scouring the world for other important books that we can copy and send to the refugee community for input. After they have been typed in, these copies go to a central library that ACIP has set up for the use of the Tibetan population in India, since in many cases they no longer have even a single copy of their own great books.
Whenever ACIP works with a library or similar institution, whether it be in Nepal, India, or even Russia, we try to make a contribution to the work of the library so that its efforts to preserve the great ideas of Asia can continue. In St. Petersburg, for example, the Project makes an annual contribution for the upkeep of the Tibetan collection; in India, we often help small native publishers of the classics to find foreign sponsors of their printings. A small but steady flow of ACIP-sponsored books even makes its way back to Tibet itself, for free distribution among the few Tibetans who are allowed the freedom of studying the sacred books openly.
In the United States, the Project has attempted to institute a "kinder" style of office and working policies, based on knowledge gained from the great books of Asia themselves. The daily schedule at our home offices includes time for silent morning reflection on the goals of the day and lifetime; a period set aside each day for personal enrichment and study of the Asian classics; and two sustained leaves per year for personal retreats, special study, and introspection. We attempt to keep our activities strictly ethical, especially in tracking all the Project finances, and in dealing with our suppliers and staff.
ACIP has, finally, placed a great emphasis on the concept of personal service, providing opportunities for volunteers with a wide variety of skills the opportunity to make their own contribution to preserving these precious books and ideas. A steady stream of dedicated, talented, and increasingly well-trained individuals, many of them young people, have already made meaningful contributions.
The contributions to the Project by the Tibetan refugees themselves have been extraordinary, continuing on without any regard to the amount of funds available at any given time, or the incredible difficulties of working in a refugee camp in a foreign land, or any of the personal hardships so common in these camps, such as bouts of tuberculosis, lack of communication with family and friends in Tibet, and poor housing or food.
The work of the Project is expected to require at least another hundred years, and we look forward to the continued growth not only of our activities, but of all the dedicated individuals involved with the Project.
Capturing an Entire Tradition | ACIP South Asia Operations
The St. Petersburg Catalog Project | ACIP in Mongolia | ACIP Imaging Division
