Edmonds-Woodway High School student Kaylee Meyers and Scriber Lake High School teacher Marjie Bowker have been chosen to be a part of a Washington state delegation to visit Dharamshala, India in early November to meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama and see the city.

A live-stream watch party of the meeting will be held at the Edmonds Center for the Arts at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10. (Doors open at 5 p.m.) Admission is free. Students and guests under the age of 23 will be entered into a drawing for door prizes and can enjoy free snacks, including Dick’s burgers.

The ECA event is hosted by State Rep. Strom Peterson (LD-21) and a special guest from the Tibetan community. You can learn more at www.wagenerals.org/edmonds-center-for-the-arts-watch-party.

Washington State Lt. Governor Cyrus Habib will be leading the delegation, which includes a dialogue with the Dalai Lama on the subject of cultivating compassion in the next decade through a program called “Compassion 2020.” Habib’s office organized the trip in partnership with the Association of Washington Generals, a statewide non-profit organization and the host of the Compassion 2020 program.

According to an announcement from Habib’s office, the purpose of the trip is to invigorate a statewide conversation on the role of compassion in addressing both local and global challenges of the upcoming decade, as well as to inspire young people to promote compassion-based work in their communities.

The subject matter of the dialogue with the Dalai Lama will include mitigating climate change, overcoming inequality, and improving civil discourse in politics. To promote general engagement with these topics, the Lt. Governor’s office has worked with community groups and educational institutions to organize live watch parties of the meeting, which will occur at 6:30 pm, Sunday, Nov. 10. Watch party audience members will have the opportunity to submit their questions on these topics to be answered live by the Dalai Lama. In addition to the Edmonds Center for the Arts, watch party events are planned at Seattle University, The Evergreen State College, Gonzaga University, Whitman College and Skagit Valley College. Some schools are offering students extra credit for participation.

Scriber Lake High teacher Marjie Bowker for the past year has been a part of the Cultures of Compassion group, which for the past year has been brainstorming ways to carry out a promise by the Dalai Lama to have three meetings with the people of Edmonds over the next year (based on a visit from an Edmonds coalition last year). The group’s main focus has been to encourage compassionate work in the youth of Washington state. Cultures of Compassion handed the project over to the lieutenant governor in the spring, and then the Association of Washington Governors got involved.

In addition to sharing the conversation with audiences throughout the state, the Compassion 2020 delegation has a specific role to play in promoting community service following the trip. EWHS student Kaylee Meyers is one of six high school students selected as “Compassion Scholars,” who, in addition to participating in the conversation with the Dalai Lama, will work with the Association of Washington Generals for the next year to implement service-oriented “compassion-projects” in their communities. The other Compassion Scholars are from Omak, Shoreline, Buckley, Seattle and Vashon.

Meyers is a passionate student who has already put her desire to increase compassion toward work that has won her a literary gem award in the YES! Magazine national essay contest. Her compassion project focuses on increasing communication between schools in order to foster collaborative projects where teachers and students give talks about their insights and perspectives on compassion.

Teachers Jeff Stone and Marjie Bowker collaborated to develop the application for a participating student, which was sent to students the last week of school in June. Bowker helped sort through 161 applications over the summer, 15 students were interviewed and five were selected. All students were asked to imagine compassion projects that would affect their communities. Bowker was recently notified that she was chosen as the teacher chaperone because of her work on the project as well as her work with the Scriber Lake High School writing project.

“Washington is poised to be a model for the country for effective, compassionate leadership, and these students offered solutions of how we should approach the urgent global issues that will challenge not just us, but future generations,” said Rep. Strom Peterson. “These students represent that future.”

Along with a representative from the Lt. Governor’s office, Peterson participated in a 2018 Washington delegation trip to Dharamsala to invite the Dalai Lama to return to Washington state to build on the impact left by his previous visit in 2008. In 2008, the Dalai Lama’s visit brought tens thousands of spectators and supported the development of compassion-based K-12 learning curricula and social/emotional learning research.