Our Story
How it all started
Nineteen59 Community is registered non-profit organization. Our organization focuses on enriching the Tibetan identity and culture preservation through education, arts and community development.
At Nineteen59, we bring awareness in the lens of fashion that promote the core values and message of oneness and awareness of the Tibetan identity, our work includes the involvement of young Tibetan creators and artists who aspire to create impact and develop within the creative field.
Purchased items cycle back into our work with goals to develop social programs and initiatives in the Tibetan community. Over the years we have had the great privilege to mobilize youth and elders in our community to hold space for dialogue, to bridge our generational gaps and bring collective community action. Our work continues to empower community members through workshops, networking events, creative activities, collaborations, outings, and mobilizing to create safe spaces.
Nineteen59 community focuses on creating online educational resources, giving platforms to young creative artists, and bridging together youth and elders aiming to fill the generational gaps in our community. We believe now is a critical time to pave paths for our community members and younger generations.
We believe that we can grow together through shared experiences and exchanges of knowledge.
#bettertogether
“It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and long term for both yourself and others will come. ”
Philosophy
Nineteen59 is a strong reminder of how much work is needed to bring the topic of Tibet and the Tibetan movement to the forefront of our collective agenda. We understand the great significance behind the year and we are using that to instil the values of identity, creativity, and education for our community. Our intentions are to motivate and inspire Tibetans to understand their roots while pursuing their goals.
In the future, we hope to initiate more events for the younger generation and together, contribute to improving the welfare of those that are less fortunate around the world. We continuously strive to create better content and quality products for our supporters.
At Nineteen59, we cycle our profits to create collaborative activities to give a platform to Tibetan youth to produce and showcase their artworks to the community. Some of our initiatives include: Our first collection RAGE was launched in 2017, and our second Nineteen59 world-wide collection will be launched in 2022, produced by 10 talented young Tibetan artists around the world. With this we have created multiple collaborations with young Tibetan artists, such as Purev, Beyul Yangdol, Sonam Datok, Tashi Palden and we hope to create more in the future. Over the years we have seen increased participation and engagement from the youth community, this has been incredible for us to see and motivates us to continues to create spaces and strategize ways for opportunities.
Some of the initiatives we've created are art competitions for students to explore the theme of 'what it means to be a Tibetan'. While sharing art forms of expression and graphic design, this initiative has let us to showcase over 25 Tibetan artists all across the globe. With the continued support from our community we have also been able to organize 3 annual seniors trip for our youth and the senior Popola and Momola’s in our community. Over the years the number of youth and seniors interest continue to grow rapidly, and we are so happy to have the various intergenerational exchanges.
In 2021 we have launched a new initiative called “Better Together” this initiative is to promote the idea of oneness and collective action, during the pandemic we were able to create a collection that supports charitable groups. This allowed us to collaborate with Tibetan Cancer Society and donate $1000 CAN during the spring.
This summer has also been an incredible milestone for us with the support of the Canada Summer Jobs grant we were able to have 2 summer paid interns, who have initiated in incredible work over the summer and extensive community organizing. Such as educational workshops with Education teacher Gyenla Tsering Dhundhup la, creating mindfulness mediation workshops with Buddhist teacher Geshe Ngawang la, and creating new merchandise. Over the years we have also engaged in numerous amounts of tabling events in New York and Toronto, such as our lhakar tabling in Toronto. This has allowed our team and volunteers of youth, to engage and spark new conversations with community members and be a part of a bigger goal to increase community development.
This year we have many initiatives planned and prepared such as the Nineteen59 worldwide youth collection, Ourstories announcement and other exciting announcements. We are constantly behind the scenes and creating and we hope you all continue to join this journey with us.