Projects for Peace Grantee Sabrina Kearney ’26 Will Work with Tibetans in Exile

Kearney will use the funds to return to Dharamshala, India, this summer to partner with Lha Charitable Trust, an organization run by Tibetan refugees to serve their people in exile.

An economics and art history major, she will teach what she calls "a personal development bootcamp" for ten to fifteen Tibetans, ages eighteen to thirty, that will cover skills such as financial literacy, entrepreneurship (e.g., how to start a small business and access microfinance loans), job and college applications abroad, and public speaking.

"I expect my workshop series to provide disadvantaged Tibetans with valuable life skills to help them become financially independent and advocate for a peaceful future in the diaspora," she writes in her application.

Last summer, Kearney received a Global Citizens Fellowship from Bowdoin's McKeen Center to work for the same organization and teach an English class. She also studied the Tibetan language and led a community art workshop, and describes being both impressed with "the strength and resilience of displaced Tibetans" and troubled by their difficult and complex situation.

Since the 1951 invasion of Tibet by China, many Tibetans have fled abroad. Currently, more than 85,000 Tibetans live in India, but their refugee status there bars them from both state college and employment systems, "forcing them to live at the margins of society," Kearney said.