Karchen Village (Karchen means "Great Star"), at an altitude above 10,000 ft in the Kham region of Tibet, has a population of about 600. Inundated with deep, heavy snow between 1993 & 1995, all of the village animals were killed plunging the community into extreme poverty. There was no school or clinic. The villagers only spoke Tibetan and none could read or write. Guta, a Tibetan who was born in Karchen but moved to Yushu as a child, was educated in Tibetan and Chinese, and studied medicine. He revisited Karchen in 1997 to medically treat the villagers, but found they could not understand the instructions on the medicines because they were illiterate. So, he started the Karchen School with only 2 students. Now, there are 69 students in the school, aged between 6 and 15. There are 3 volunteer Tibetan teachers and 1 paid Chinese teacher. The students are mostly instructed in Tibetan & Chinese language and grammar, and mathematics (with occasional Tibetan folk dance & folk song classes). Much progress has been made, but the school and the village are still very poor and lacking in much needed school supplies, as well as warm clothes, food, and medical treatment for the children. Guta has used his own salary to buy medicine for the villagers, and has spent time there giving them free medical training, but this is a hard situation he faces and he can not do it alone. Wind Horse Adventure Tours has been working for several years to help support this school and its students.

The School Project is our way of giving back to the community around us. It began with the Karchen School as the need became known to us, but during our travels throughout the region, we have found more and more communities in need of aid. There are several more schools that we hope to be able to add to the project soon. Besides gifts of food, clothing, and school supplies, our goal is to set up sponsorships between these schools and schools in other countries. We would like to set up a chain of communication in the form of pen pal letters or postcards between the students of the sponsoring schools and the students here to help foster a greater understanding on all sides of the great wide world beyond all of our doors.