Our school is a not-for-profit institution and receives no direct public funding. Families and sponsors pay socially-affordable school fees.  You can become involved in the school as a volunteer by investing your passion, energy, expertise and time.

Between May and September volunteer opportunities are available for:

• Art, music, IT and sports: experienced people for a duration of one to three months.
• English language tutors: experienced tutors for a duration of one to three months for two hours per evening, 4.30pm-6.30pm, four days per week, Tuesday to Friday.

If you have experience matching the school's current volunteering opportunities above, please e-mail This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.with:
1. your CV/resume
2. an explanatory note of why you would like to volunteer at the school
3. your subject
4. which months between May and September you would like to volunteer.

Due to the large number of enquiries we receive, we will be unable to respond to enquires that do not include the four details listed above. Thank you for your help on this matter.

By offering their time and expertise, and paying their own travel and expenses, volunteers can make a significant contribution to the life of the school and its students.

Nearly all the international support for the project is provided on a voluntary basis, including much of the work of the Arup Design Team.
 

Druk Padma Karpo School is making the transition from traditional to child-centred teaching methods and currently has more than 850 students on the roll.

Due to increased student numbers and expansion of the curriculum and services, Druk Padma Karpo School - known to many as Rancho's School - invites applications for the following posts.

For teaching staff, only qualified and experienced applicants with an intimate knowledge of the Indian education system should apply. Further information about DPKS is available elsewhere on this website.

Applications and enquiries to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

July 2023:

February 2023:

Ways to raise funds

Don’t forget to use easyfundraising.org.uk next time you shop online to raise funds for us.

It's a really simple way to raise money for Druk Padma Karpo School through your everyday online shopping with retailers like Amazon, Argos, John Lewis, ASOS, Booking.com, eBay, Boden, and M&S and it’s completely free! Shopping doesn’t cost you any more.
Every time you shop we receive a small donation from the retailer to say ‘thank you’ and it’s completely free.

Please visit our easyfundraising page at https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/dwls/ and click ‘join us’.
It’s good to click for the Donation Reminder, https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/donation-reminder/ so that when you go into participating online stores the easyfundraising logo pops-up to remind you to “activate donation”.

Please give it a go and encourage others to do so too.

The Donation reminder: https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/donation-reminder/ makes it really easy! Once you have activated this, when you go onto participating stores the easyfundraising logo appears with the message: Do you want to raise up to x% at “store name”. Click the “Activate donation box”
The website page refreshes and the message appears: “That’s great your donation has been activated”. Then shop as usual.

We really would appreciate your on-line shopping support. Many thanks.

Run a race: 5K, 10K, half marathon, full marathon. Get your friends, family, work colleagues and employer to sponsor you.

Hold a cake sale.

Host a coffee morning, lunch or dinner.

Arrange a film night.

Keep a coin box, when it is full count it up and send the amount to us online.

eBay.co.uk, the internet auction site, enables you to buy and sell items online whilst helping fund our school.

Sell for charity

Supporting Druk Padma Karpo School when selling on eBay.co.uk is easy. Not only can you make a difference to our children by donating between 10% and 100% of your item's final selling price, but you also benefit from your listing receiving special promotion within eBay.

Often this can mean more bids and even more selling success!

After your item sells, we will find your donation paid directly into our bank account, along with Gift Aid (if you've ticked the box) and an eBay fee donation.

Buy for charity

Imagine a world where you can shop with the guarantee that your hard-earned money will be donated directly to Druk Padma Karpo School.

When you visit our eBay.co.uk shop you know that every seller who chooses to take part donates some, or all, of their final selling price to a charity of their choice. Thanks to eBay you can rest assured that the money is going where it should – direct to the school where it’ll used to continue development of the project.

How to donate

Donations can be made online or by posting cheques. You can find out more on our Donate page.

A fundraising luncheon for the Druk Padma Karpo School was held in Singapore on Friday 4th April 2015.  The school's founder His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa was present and the theme of the event was "Appreciating the Humanitarian Activities of His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa".

His Eminence Thuksey Rinpoche, Chair of Druk Padma Karpo Educational Society (DPKES), organised a special condolence assembly of all students and staff on 26th June 2014 in memory of Philip Cornwell who died that morning aged 67.

Dr. Philip Cornwell, Trustee of Drukpa Trust, had a successful career in transport planning before becoming involved in the Druk White Lotus School, eventually becoming its international project manager and raising hundreds of thousands of pounds for the school.

This week has seen more preparation of the vegetable beds by the landscape team.

We have also been planting up more seeds into beds and trays. The upside of planting into trays is being able to monitor and control them from the more negative impact of the flooding water irrigation regime, which can be quite harsh on emergent seedlings. The downside is that they need watering twice a day but this isn’t unusual for smaller containers in any climate and has been easy enough to achieve so far. I am wondering about seeing if there are any residential children who may be interested in a spot of light Sunday / weekend seedling watering for when I am not here. The seedlings will be potted on or transplanted soon enough.

It was school planting and gardening afternoon on Saturday towards the gardening competition, which was boisterous and productive. I prepared an A4 sheet of very simple garden criteria for each classroom to have. Karma walked me around the classrooms and I distributed a few little plants and seeds as well as talked about the children’s plans for their gardens. I look forward to watching the gardens develop but it will be Stuart who will judge them later on in the year.

Basset from JAINS also arrived on Saturday for an initial analysis of remaining works to the irrigation system. Mathura, Tsetan and I walked around the site with him assessing the installation and we also discussed the pump installation with Angdus. Basset did not seem to think there were any great hurdles and estimated a fully operational system within a month.

See what can be done in one year below.

The Plant Nursery Spring 2013, first fruit trees               

The Plant Nursery Spring 2014, fruit trees blossoming         

The tree stock in the nursery is coming into leaf and following a few light rainy periods everything is looking a little cleaner and less dusty than usual.

The week has been focused on beginning to purchase seeds and flower and vegetable seedlings and plant them into the nursery or distribute them to the house mothers and classrooms around the school. We have tried to buy alfalfa three times now from the agricultural department in Leh but have had the misfortune to arrive at just the wrong time to get the right chap to give us the ticket to take away some of this precious commodity.

I met with Angdus to discuss remedial and new construction works for the play area. We looked at a variety of different tyre-based features that should be easy enough to build. This structure will be somewhat dependant on how many tyres we can source in the meantime.

I arranged for a children’s planting day in the classroom gardens for the garden competition.