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Over 40 percent of Tibet’s land area is now protected through a community-based approach to conservation. Pendebas help make this possible. Pendeba is a new Tibetan word for "worker who benefits the village." Pendebas are locally-elected men and women who volunteer to be leaders in community change. They are trained in a range of practical skills including conservation, primary health, sustainable forestry, income generation, and the implementation of community workplans. To date, over 600 Pendebas have been trained to support communities in the Qomolangma (Mt. Everest) National Nature Preserve and the Four Great Rivers region of Tibet, China. The program has been such a success in mobilizing community energy for conservation that Future Generations government partners are interested in expanding the model to more protected areas in China. And, the word Pendeba, has become an official word in the Chinese language.

Walking from house to house, the local Pendeba brings basic health care to the people and works on environmental issues such as clean drinking water and fuel conservation. Improvements in the lives of the villagers come in other ways as well. Irrigation ditches have been dug and solar cooking has been demonstrated. School books, in Tibetan, have been distributed. Children receive better care and, as a result, only half the number of child deaths happen as did five years ago. Women are starting to practice family planning. Men, women, and children have someone to turn to for help. 

One indication of the value of the Pendeba service is that villagers themselves support it out of their own resources. The service is sustainable and available to all. They are shaping their future.

From a recent report filed by Puchong, Director of the Pendeba Program, come the following examples of typical Pendeba activities.

Sanddanlin Village is a pastoral village located at too high an elevation for agriculture. Their Pendeba knows his villagers are too poor to buy even the most basic medicines. To set up an insurance fund to meet this need, he obtained 32 goats from villagers and had them looked after collectively by the community. From the sale each spring of wool and each fall of selected goats, he put the proceeds into the co-op to buy medicine. Today, their goat herd has grown to 63, and the medicine fund has ¥1,098 (about $137) in reserves with ¥200 (about $25) reinvested in medicine. The goats and the reserve fund now make the co-op worth ¥6,338 (about $782).

In Nyalam the Pendeba is Lhamu Tsering. Her environment has local medicinal herbs, which she teaches people to use. These, along with oral rehydration, are used to cure diarrhea. They are now collecting the herbs to sell to tourists, who pass through Nyalam, as this village is on the main road.

Pendeba Zhenchiong's village, Basong, also has an ongoing problem with diarrhea. She is teaching the oral rehydration solution (a matchbox of roasted barley flour, half a beer cap of salt, and a beer bottle of boiled water) to cure the diarrhea. She also has had her village plant poplar seedlings to create a community forest. People had thought Basong was too high to grow trees until she showed them it was possible.

The Pendeba in Chudang takes care of the forests of the Gama Valley, which is a core zone in the QNNP under special protection. Before the protection began, many people were cutting trees. Their Pendeba has undertaken an ambitious reforestation process by supervising a large nursery of poplar, willow, and apple trees. This helps his villagers, the former tree-cutters, become tree planters.

Chamemba Village is another pastoral village at 4,500 meters on the shores of Lake Peku, with a view of Shishapagma Mountain. Safe drinking water is their major concern. They selected their village elder, Tajie, to become a Pendeba. With the support of Future Generations, he led the village to dig an irrigation ditch and pipe spring water from 300 meters above the village. The spring turned out to be productive enough to irrigate about 25 acres of land as well.

Pendebas provide basic health needs of their villages. Beyond acute care, they also concentrate on education, family planning, and immunizations. The current total of 220 Pendebas allows 80% of the QNNP villages to be served. If the number can be increased to 450, then all 320 villages of the QNNP will be served, and many will even have two Pendebas to work for the well-being of the villagers.

The QNNP includes four counties of Shigatse Prefecture (Dingri, Kyrong, Nyalam, and the counties of Guojia, Jiangge, Saer, Riwr, and Chentang.) The total area of the QNNP is 33,000 square kilometers. At the end of 1989, the total population of the QNP was 67,000, and now it has increased to 80,000. 95% of them are farmers and nomads; the balance living in cities. Dingri and the four Dingjie counties are the poorest counties in China.

Social development is a priority in the QNNP. Recognizing the widespread social need of the four counties, discussions from the beginning focused on how to protect nature as well as improve the local economies and human condition. Nature protection was an easier challenge than the social development. Nature protection action concentrated on mobilizing people to protect the trees and to stop killing wild animals. Dr. Carl Taylor, the world renowned expert in public health who has worked in more than 60 developing countries, led an international survey team in 1992 in Zagor Xiang in Dingri. From this survey a decision was made by the government to start innovative community based services. Under the sponsorship of Future Generations Dr. Carl Taylor, Mrs. Chun-Wuei Su Chien, and Dr. Daniel Taylor-Ide led a collaborative planning process with the staff of the QNNP, Dr. Gesang Norbu of TARs Peoples Hospital, Dr. Baima of Dingri County Hospital, and Dr. Sam Myers. A detailed planning program was held Pendleton Community Care in the USA with the additional expert guidance of Dr. Henry Taylor, Mr. Paul Capcara, and Ms. Maggie Hooton.

With guidance from the people in the QNNP villages and their statements about their needs together a balanced consideration was made how to use community health services as a beginning for change and as an incentive to the villagers to increase their awareness of environmental protection and income generation. Many lessons were useful from the international experience. Together we designed the "Pendeba" Program. The name "Pendeba" was then specially created in order to describe accurately the purpose of "the worker who benefits the village." Following this a series of continuing collaborative design efforts for two years helped clarify the Pendeba Project and in this the project was helped by continuing work by the Future Generations team mentioned above as well as now Dr. Sam Myers, Mrs. Susan Holcombe, and Ms. Gay Wierdsma. At the same time the Management Bureau and Future Generations signed a seven point mutual agreement for the implementation of the Pendeba Program, especially on how to implement and strengthen supervision of these village based workers.

In order to increase the effectiveness of the program, upon the recommendation of Future Generations, we also invited Mr. Arthur Holcombe the Resident Representative of UNDP to visit the QNNP. With his help we applied for support to assist our village based activities in poverty alleviation, local community technical assistance, basic infrastructures, and other funding.

In August 1997 the number of Pendebas reached a figure of 100 representing all corners of the QNNP. The Pendebas engaged in disease prevention, environmental protection, eco-tourism preparation, poverty alleviation, and income generation. All these tasks are creative and received the support of all levels of the government as well as the villages of the Pendebas who welcomed these new opportunities whole-heartedly. In September of that year a major discussion was held in Shigatse at the Management Bureau to review the first three years experience. Participants at the meeting were representatives from all groups and districts of the Pendebas, also representatives from all four counties of the QNNP, local officials, Shigatse officials, and Management Bureau staff. In addition, Future Generations sent Dr. Carl Taylor, Mrs. Chun-Wuei Su Chien, and an expert from Nepal, Mr. Nawang Gurung who is the supervisor of the CDHP in Nepal which is a program very similar to the Pendeba Project.

At the meeting, all participants agreed that the achievement of the Pendeba Program has been tremendous. Representatives from the Shigatse Health Bureau and Women's Federation said the programs pointed to a new direction for rural welfare development for Tibet and granted the program their long term positive support. The local people's representatives felt that the capacity building aspect enabled the local people to get a high level of awareness about their needs and what could be done and the local people's representatives strongly requested that the training programs speed up the preparation of Pendebas so each village in the QNNP would have at least one Pendeba.