History The Vancouver-based Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education is an embodiment of His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama’s life-long commitment to compassion and inner well-being. Founded in 2005 by the Dalai Lama and Victor Chan, the Center is envisioned as a world-class institution, firmly grounded in Vancouver yet present and influential on the global stage. The Center has no religious or political affiliations. It promotes peace through education, personal transformation, and dialogue. The Dalai Lama believes that vital, sustainable communities depend upon many small, individual acts of compassion and helpfulness. By thinking less about ourselves and more about the well-being of others, we enhance our growth and happiness. By helping others, we contribute to the greater good. Along the way, our lives and the lives of others are transformed. Committed to Educating the Heart "My religion is kindness," the Dalai Lama famously says. The Center embraces this ethos and His Holiness’ belief that each of us has a responsibility to "develop a warm heart, cultivate compassion and work for peace within oneself and in the world." "Educating the heart" is the Center’s tag line. The Center will provide a learning environment that cultivates mindfulness: the integration of mind, body, and spirit. It will encourage heightened awareness within of our inner potential through diverse practices of art. And it will provide a venue for creative interpretation of the world’s many wisdom traditions. By bringing peace into our own lives, the Center will help to bring peace into the world. Mission Statement The Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education educates the heart and fosters compassion through: creative learning, facilitating and applying research, and connecting people and ideas. Values The Center encourages values such as compassion, forgiveness, tolerance, contentment and self- discipline through engagement with the community. These are the values that contribute to peace and harmony locally, nationally and globally. We believe that most people embrace and recognize the importance of these values, but often don’t know how to access the information and guidance they seek to bring them into their lives. We will help them do that. The Center seeks, in all of its activities, to reflect values of compassion, mutual understanding, inner well-being, mindfulness, creativity, peacefulness, warm heartedness, aspiration and interconnectedness. About Our Programs The Dalai Lama’s vision of the learning process involves a full engagement of our physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions. This holistic approach seeks wisdom rather than mere information. It naturally plugs into our capacity for compassion, forgiveness and imagination. This way of knowing – the cultivation of empathy – is at the heart of moral development. The Dalai Lama believes that the most essential knowledge arises not from the head but from the heart. The Center is committed to education that fosters cognitive development and spiritual self- reflection. Under the guidance of the Dalai Lama, the Center will develop educational initiatives that nourish both intellect and wisdom in service to the greater good. From its foundational concern for "educating the heart", the Center is working to build strong connections with others in the community in support of current and future programs. Connecting for Change Connecting for Change is comprised of a series of dialogues, hosted both locally and internationally, that connect people across boundaries of business, philanthropy and community, building understanding and creating inter-connectedness. The program facilitates meaningful conversations and provides tools to inspire personal reflection, transformation and connection with others across sectors and professions. It strives to strengthen and sustain an increasingly connected, collaborative and actively compassionate society. Speakers Program The Dalai Lama Center will host regular seminars, workshops, dialogues and lectures, including a Nobel Lecture Series. It will invite distinguished thinkers, educators, researchers, social innovators, artists and other leaders from diverse cultural, religious and educational backgrounds. Speakers and events will reinforce the values and advance the mission of the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education. The Speakers Series offers public events that focus on key areas of interest to the Center and to His Holiness The Dalai Lama, including science and its relationship to spirituality, education of the heart and related research, and the development of compassion and its contribution to the public good. The Speakers Series seeks to create, nourish and sustain the Center’s internal and external communities, and to reach and engage the widest possible audience through various media and by partnering with other organizations Programs in Development Center for the Advancement of Heart-Mind Education Inspired by the Dalai Lama's strong interest in education, the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education is working to advance education that addresses the full capacities of children. As an important part of this initiative, the Center is planning to establish a continuing program to support expert knowledge, public awareness and specific initiatives promoting the emotional, social and intellectual development of youth. This educational resource will aim to ensure that in British Columbia, and beyond, the teaching of mindful awareness and compassion is embedded as a basic component of the primary and secondary school curriculum. CAHME will work collaboratively with school boards, universities and other educational institutions. It will engage with researchers, school authorities, teachers and parents with the goal of developing educational programming and enabling the exchange and dissemination of relevant ideas, techniques and best practices. The Center will consult with local and international advisory groups, complementing the work of other agencies. It will be distinctive in its local attention, by seeking to stimulate the emergence of the Vancouver area and British Columbia as a world centre in employing educational approaches that emphasize the heart-mind connection. It will be international in its reach and connections through association with prominent researchers and with agencies such as the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL) in the U.S. The center, and the resulting diffusion of research demonstrating the linkages between emotional and cognitive development, may lead forward to the creation of a collaborative school that will model heart-mind education throughout its curriculum. XIV Dalai Lama Global Scholars and Fellows Program The Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education has committed itself to exploring the possibility of establishing in collaboration with other parties a XIV Dalai Lama Global Scholars and Fellows Program to recognize and advance the learning of talented young people who have demonstrated a commitment to compassion in action. Each year, the Program would select and engage young people from North America and throughout the world, based on their demonstrated capacity to advance the connections between the Dalai Lama's values and interests and the creation of a peaceful and sustainable world. Those selected at the undergraduate or young professional levels would be supported in pursuing paths of study or other approved activities for one or more years. They would come together periodically at the Dalai Lama Center in Vancouver to learn from each other and from distinguished guests and mentors. The Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education is currently sponsoring a feasibility study regarding this major global initiative to clarify its vision, activities and anticipated outcomes, and to assess the breadth of potential support. The initiation of awards identified with His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama would advance a model of recognition and support for young people that is diverse, inclusive, interdependent and comprehensive – clearly attuned to the new realities, challenges and opportunities of today’s complex and turbulent era in human development. Future Programs and Initiatives The Dalai Lama Center believes that the peace is advanced through the engagement of a broad and diverse community, locally and globally. Hence, the Center will develop community and global programs that engage people through education, dialogue and research. The Center also has a long-term goal to establish a physical Center which will provide a home for its programs and function as a special gathering place and focal point for people of all walks of life from near and far. When built, this will be the only Center in the world that bears the Dalai Lama’s name. Like the Carter Center and the proposed Tutu Peace Center, the DLC will radiate positive social change not just in Vancouver, but throughout the world. This unique institution will be an important global legacy providing a permanent home for the secular commitments of the Dalai Lama: to advance his twin goals of personal growth and acting for the greater good. Currently we are considering locations in the downtown core of Vancouver. Trustees Victor Chan Brenda Eaton Evan Alderson Gwyn Morgan James Hoggan Martha Piper Thomas Rafael Advisory Board His Holiness The Dalai Lama Betty Williams Desmond Tutu Jimmy Carter Jody Williams Kim Campbell Mairead Maguire Rigoberta Menchu Tum Shirin Ebadi Tendzin Choegyal Vaclav Havel Sakyong Mipham .