Goal $6,000 • Funded $5,650
(2014) Treasure Caretaker Training was piloted in Sikkim in May 2014, after extensive consultation with His Holiness 17th Karmapa. His Holiness helped secure funding and generously offered Tsurphu Labrang personnel, including his General Secretary, to be on site during the training session. The participants also used his statue of Lord Buddha Shakyamuni – carried by his sister during their escape from Tibet – as an example to be digitally recorded during the training. Treasure Caretaker Training teaches monks, nuns, and cultural caretakers to create digital inventories of their monastery and museum treasures, using their own mobile phones. Digital inventory is highly important at this time when art theft in the third world is on a sharp rise and Buddhist art, in particular, is considered highly collectible.