Dickey Orphanage

mama Dadhon and baby dhodak Tamdrin ‘Mama’ Dadhon sold her family jewels, gathered the proceeds of the teahouse and with 300,000 Yuan and a lot of courage started Dickey´s Orphanage in Lhasa, Tibet´s capital on September 10th 2002. In Tibetan dickey means ‘fine’ and ‘happiness’.

At the moment Dickey´s is home to 72 children. They all get lodging, tuition and medical aid. Because a lot of the children don´t know where or when they were born, September 10th is everybody´s birthday – a big party! The parents of these children died because of illness or accidents. Some children were abandoned because their parents saw no way out of their miserable situation. At Dickey´s these children are given a chance to a new start in life.

Mama Dadhon received financial support from local business men and international donations. There are, however, no official government grants. The local military hospital provides medical supplies. As such Dickey is a private initiative. They have some staff, including the schoolbus driver. Thanks to a recent substantial donation, Dickey´s Orphanage could fullfill its dream of building a proper home.

Saturday September 20th flea market - St.Andries square, Antwerp, Belgium starts 1pm

Sunday September 27th flea market Radio Minerva - Antwerp L.O. starts 12am

Saturday November 28th Alex Agnew, stand-up comedy at coStA culture house in Antwerp, Belgium, doors at 8pm. Sold out!. You can still join the after party at the bar until closing time.

Sunday December 6th “Sintersage”, opening photo exhibition with cookies, bishop’s wine and Indian chicken food and general good times at Den Hopsack, Antwerp, Belgium. Starts 2pm. Live music with jazzy Démi Sec at 5pm.

More activities are in the pipeline and will join this calendar soon!

You can shop at Sarah’s Little Shop of Borrows. For every t-shirt that was created by Sarah, 5 euro will be transferred to a bank account for Dickey’s Orphanage. This money will be used to generate more funds for Dickey’s and help amala Dadhon sustain the home. Thank you.

You can shop at Sarah’s Little Shop of Borrows. For every t-shirt that was created by Sarah, 5 euro will be transferred to a bank account for Dickey’s Orphanage. This money will be used to generate more funds for Dickey’s and help amala Dadhon sustain the home. Thank you.

Saturday September 20th flea market - St.Andries square, Antwerp, Belgium starts 1pm

Sunday September 27th flea market Radio Minerva - Antwerp L.O. starts 12am

Saturday November 28th Alex Agnew, stand-up comedy at coStA culture house in Antwerp, Belgium, doors at 8pm. Sold out!. You can still join the after party at the bar until closing time.

Sunday December 6th “Sintersage”, opening photo exhibition with cookies, bishop’s wine and Indian chicken food and general good times at Den Hopsack, Antwerp, Belgium. Starts 2pm. Live music with jazzy Démi Sec at 5pm.

More activities are in the pipeline and will join this calendar soon!

The Antwerp-based Dutch artist Bert Sarah will permanently donate ten percent of his art sales to Dickey Orphanage. He makes drawings with the famous BIC ballpoints only. With only blue, red, green and black available he manages to create a colourful and wonderous world on paper.

This drawing is his interpretation of the famous words by the Turkish poet Nâzim Hikmet, “To live like a tree single and at liberty and brotherly like the trees of a forest this yearning is ours”.

On May 9th and 10th the famous Belgian folk singer/songwriter Willem Vermandere performed at Theater aan de Stroom in Antwerp, Belgium for the local Spring fundraising event for Dickey’s. 237 people attented the wonderful concert. We collected 2000 euro for the orphanage.

From Friday January 9th until Thursday February 5th you can visit the exhibition ‘Mongoliez’ in Den Hopsack (Grote Pieterpotstraat, Antwerpen) with pictures by Kees Meijer and Sarah Buys. During the exhibition photographs and photo cards are sold to raise money for Dickey’s.

Despite recent turmoil in the region, the children and staff at Dickey’s are all safe and ok. The new home is located quite far from the downtown area where most of the troubles took place.

Friday January 18th starting at 8pm is the opening night of a photo exhibition at Café Multatuli, Lange Vlierstraat 9 in Antwerp, Belgium. During the exhibition, which ends at Easter, photocards are on sale to support the Dickey Orphanage.

From July 15-28, 2007, family physician Dr. Minh Han in a team of 19 people from Innovative Humanitarian Solutions went to Lhasa, Tibet to care for the people there. Specifically, they wanted to study and find a cure for Kashin-Beck Disease, a debilitating arthritic condition beginning in childhood. But, they also wanted to see what other needs were there that they could make an impact on. So, they ended up doing much more than just seeing patients in villages.

The team visited the Dickey Orphanage on July 22. They brought medical supplies for treating the kids as well as donated beanie babies, toothpaste, and toothbrushes. Most of the kids had diarrhea from a recent picnic. Some had perforated eardrums from untreated ear infections. Most of the kids though were happy and healthy. As the medical staff took care of the kids, the rest of the team played ball, colored, taught English songs, and horsed around with the children. At the end of their time, the children lined up and sang several songs to them. They felt that were definitely the ones who were more blessed through their visit to Dickey.

Read more about their work here: http://minhsmissions.com, Innovative Humanitarian Solutions

by Lydia McCallister (Pulaski VA, USA)

I’ve decided to call her “Xingfu” for her face has brought me much happiness. I stare at the picture on my desk and wonder what ‘my little girl’ is doing. My visit to the Dickey orphanage three years ago has had the most profound effect on how I have accepted each day since. My travels have taken me far away from home, and Tibet, and yet I am drawn to that smiling face from Lhasa. And, even though I was quite “blown away” by the country and the Potala, it was the orphanage that had the greatest emotional impact on me. The tour group that my husband and I had traveled with had planned the orphanage visit in its itinerary, and I am extremely grateful that OAT (Overseas Adventure Travel) for the inclusion of these types of visits in all of their tours. I have been searching the web for a while in hopes of finding more information about the orphanage. When I discovered your website, I was drawn back to a place and time that three years could not diminish in my mind. Our small group entered the orphanage, not too sure of ourselves or how to react to homeless waifs. But, what we discovered was that these children did indeed have a home, and the warmth and love that they freely gave away to strangers touched us all very deeply (so much so that we all had teary eyes upon our departure, as I am sure countless other visitors since then have experienced). BUT, one little girl grabbed my hand and clung to my little finger for almost my entire stay at her adopted home. She sang songs with the other children, but quickly grabbed my finger again when she had finished. I did not get her name for our visit was all too brief and Mama Dadhon (Dazhen) was so busy answering everyone else’s questions that I could speak with her. So, “Xingfu” and I just stayed close together and exchanged emotions with the ‘language of eyes.’

I had hoped to make a return visit to the orphanage before leaving Lhasa, but my plans were circumvented by pseudo-military types who came to our hotel in the middle of the night demanding passports from the foreign visitors. Our guide was able to defuse the incident, but another trip (other than our departure to the airport) was out of the question. My hope is to establish some small conduit through which I could communicate with “Xingfu” The Internet has definitely helped, and quite significantly, in providing the means. Now, if I could discover her name, perhaps we could renew a connection begun three years ago and I could reciprocate with the same love and warmth that was so freely offered then, bringing to mind that love is the only thing that is not diminished when given away.