Tibet Foundation - Aid to Tibet - A Yak for Life
Far removed from the 'Tiger' Economies of East Asia, the high plateau of Tibet is heartland of the Yak economy!
Not just photogenic, three female Yak, or dri produce enough milk to feed one person!
Photo Jon Aldridge/ATT
The vast nomadic grasslands of Tibet are inhabitable only thanks to the lumbering Yak. Virtually everything that a nomad family has or needs spouts forth from their dependable herds. Beyond meat and wool, yak - or more accurately the female yak, called "dri" in Tibetan - produce a rich milk used in making cheese, yogurt, and of course the ubiquitous Yak Butter, its smell prevalent throughout Tibet. Yak caravans still reach out to the remotest areas of Tibet and - where farmed - Yak are the plateau's tractors. Yak bones make jewellery and tent-fastenings, and yak dung is used to fire the otherwise fuel-less stoves of the Tibetan plateau.
It costs just £85 to sponsor a Yak, and help to preserve a tradition!
The Nomadic way of life, unchanged over centuries, is increasingly under threat from changing social and environmental conditions. In 1995-6, devastating blizzards ravished the eastern Tibetan plateau, killing hundreds of thousands of animals, and leaving many nomads destitute. Though the life of a nomad is hard, the alternatives - migration to the cities where they are unqualified for more than manual labour - is almost always much worse.
Since 1996, Tibet Foundation has been purchasing Yaks from people and monasteries in the richer lowlands, and redistributing them among the poorest highland nomads. We have are also providing Yaks to worthy institutions such as Boomsar Old People's Home. The Yak for Life scheme makes a real contribution toward keeping people self-sufficient, and keeping their tradition alive!
To sponsor a Yak costs just £85. Aid to Tibet will purchase one dri (a female Yak) with a calf, and distribute this them to one of the neediest families in the region. There is a fun side to the programme to - donors can name the Yak (for their donor's certificate at least), and receive an exclusive 'Yak for Life' T-shirt.
