How one woman is helping to empower youth in Parkdale's Tibetan community
'It all goes back to my Buddhist traditions, the values of wisdom and compassion'
Chemi Lhamo didn't just how much she could give back to her own neighbourhood until she phoned home from a clean water project she was helping with in Sri Lanka.
Lhamo was in Grade 10 at the time. But that phone call to her mother, who was in India, turned out to be a defining moment.
Lhamo grew up in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood, one of fewer than 10,000 Tibetans who call Toronto home. She went to school at Parkdale Collegiate Institute.
But while she wasn't the only member of her community living in Parkdale, she realized two things were missing: a sense of community and the resources to succeed.
"I saw a lot of Tibetan faces … which was reassuring," she told CBC Metro Morning host Matt Galloway on Tuesday.
"But as a young child, new immigrant, I felt a little bit lost with school, jobs, lots of other issues," she said.
Looking to her own backyard
Over the course of that conversation with her mother, Lhamo learned there were thousands of Tibetans living in India after fleeing the Chinese occupation of their homeland.
Lhamo learned too just how privileged she was — and that she was in a position to give back.
That's when she decided she wanted to do more to contribute to her own Tibetan Parkdale community. It wasn't long before she started an internship with the Tibetan Canadian Cultural Centre.
During her several years with the organization, Lhamo has helped launch the Tibetan Youth Alliance Committee, aimed at empowering young Tibetan Canadians through mentorships, community events and promoting cultural preservation.
"It all goes back to my Buddhist traditions, the values of wisdom and compassion going hand-in-hand, learning about how to be happy, internally happy," she said on Metro Morning.
'That's where I draw strength from'
"Personally, that's where I draw strength from … when I looked to within my own community, that's where I found all of the answers."
Today, Parkdale is transforming. The neighbourhood is one of Toronto's gentrification battlegrounds.
But in the midst of that, Lhamo says, the Tibetan community has grown.
"There's a number of Tibetans going to Parkdale Collegiate Institute," she said. So much so that "now we even have the 'Tenzin joke'" because so many Tibetans are named Tenzin.
And now every Wednesday, the space outside Parkdale Collegiate becomes a dance floor, where Tibetans young and old come together to perform and preserve the traditional circle dance — something Lhamo never could have anticipated when she first moved into the neighbourhood.
What's it like?
"You've got to see it yourself," Lhamo said with a laugh.
With files from Metro Morning