Bringing Community Forward
We end Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month with Tenzin Pelmo sharing her own story. Tenzin Pelmo was one of the leading board members of Regional Tibetan Youth Congress (RTYC) in Minnesota. In addition to providing services for the Tibetan community in Minnesota, they advocate for a free Tibet as well.
Pelmo says that she’s been lucky, which is a part of why she’s invested in building her community and in connecting with others.
“My dad won the visa lottery,” she says. The special legislation for Tibetans in the 1990 Immigration Act allowed 1000 Tibetans to come to the U.S., which included her father.
He didn’t come to Minnesota right away though, she says, stating that he worked in the fishing industry in Alaska at first.
“At the time, there wasn’t a lot of Tibetans so where you found the opportunity [for a job], you went there,” Pelmo says.
Pelmo adds that she’s grateful to her dad:
“By the time my family and I came to the U.S., he had prepared everything for us. He made sure there was a house, bought a car — I’m sure he wasn’t making that much money, but he was still able to afford these things for us to have a better life,” Pelmo says.
Pelmo’s earlier school years were in close knit with the Tibetan community in Minnesota, where she found herself surrounded by other Tibetans who also shared a very similar story.
“I don’t think I could have done as well without my Tibetan friends with me,” she says.
This sense of community helped Pelmo even as she entered her high school years and moved to the suburbs, where there were fewer Tibetan folks.
“Thinking back, I convinced myself that I was fine with everything, but I think it really did affect me because I didn’t have close Tibetan friends to just talk with everyday and share,” Pelmo says.
Pelmo was the first generation of Tibetan Americans entering college in the U.S. at the time, which she adds, was difficult.
“Being far from home, not having any guidance… Lots of Tibetans I spoke with later on in life said they really struggled a lot,” Pelmo says.
While Pelmo states that she was not involved in Lamton Organization, she says that many Tibetan students, including a few friends, had a hard time in college and formed a small organization to facilitate Tibetan peer-to-peer support. Lamton, which means guidance in Tibetan, had college aged students helping out high school and middle school students with homework, college applications, and provided mentorship.
“There are so many other resources that the younger generation of Tibetan students have today that we didn’t have,” Pelmo says. “This goes for our generation too; our parents didn’t have luxuries that we can afford now.”
This same sense of community pushed Pelmo to her work at RTYC.
“It’s important for us to support each other,” she says. “Once a Tibetan comes here and once they realize how hard it is, they try to make things easier for the next generation. I think that says a lot about the community.”