A+ in Happiness

MOUNT MADONNA SCHOOL’s high school seniors are participating in the Dalai Lama’s “Project Happiness,” joining students from Africa and India in a dialogue about a human being’s true sense of inner joy.

Swapping e-mails, videos and blogs, students from three continents are engaging in a cross-cultural conversation about the relationship of lasting happiness to one’s personal ethics and values.

“We’re using new media to communicate old wisdom,” explains student Luke Sanders-Self.

The 14 students learned about the project through the Tibetan spiritual leader’s Dalai Lama Foundation, which asked the Mount Madonna “Values in American Thought” class to participate.

The small independent school located in California’s Monterey Bay area is the only one in Western Hemisphere asked to join the endeavor. Class instructor Ward Mailliard is thrilled to take on the project with his students. “We’re a small school with a big heart grappling with the larger questions of life, happiness and what it means to be a community.” 

The MMS students are collaborating with students from the Dominion Heritage Academy in Jos, Nigeria and the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala, India. Together they will create a high school curriculum for the Dalai Lama’s book, “Ethics for the New Millennium” in a collaborative effort dubbed “Project Happiness.”   

“I’m exploring the true causes of my happiness,” says 17-year-old Emily Crubaugh. “Not just the causes on the surface, but the things in my life that I really care about that are pushing me forward.”

The lessons from this project are also resonating with the other schools. Nigerian school principal Emmanuel Ande Ivorgba said, “This project will help us as Nigerian youths to begin a process of rediscovering our true identity and also realizing what we have lost as a people and a nation.” 

The finished curriculum will give voice to those aspects of the Dalai Lama’s ideas that most appeal to the students’ inner sense of what is true and meaningful.

The project culminates in March of 2007, with students traveling by plane, train and jeep to the mountains of the Tibetan Children’s Village in Dharamsala, India. For these teens from three different parts of the globe the vital conversation comes full circle when they meet face-to-face for the first time and get an audience with the Dalai Lama. Their journey will be the subject of documentary that will be aired as an independent film and on PBS. They will also provide news to Channel One, reaching 7 million teens, serving a third of the high schools in America.

“This is the apex of my school experience,” said Mount Madonna School senior Mark Hansen.

For more information about the project visit www.ProjectHappiness.net or call Mount Madonna School, (408) 847-2717, www.mountmadonnaschool.org.