Contact is a monthly magazine published by Lha Charitable Trust and available free of charge. It has been recognized as a registered publication under the Office of the Registrar of Newspapers for India and the Indian Ministry of Information & Broadcasting since 2013. Contact is mentioned in Lonely Planet and other international travel resources. Contact was founded in 1997 and joined forces with Lha in 2004.
Contact magazine aims to disseminate news about Tibetans inside Tibet, the Tibetan community in exile and information about His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s activities worldwide. It is the only monthly English-medium news magazine on Tibetan issues which is distributed freely around Tibetan communities. Between 700 and 1,000 copies are printed monthly and circulated around Dharamshala and to various Tibetan settlements, schools, non-governmental organizations and diplomatic offices throughout India. Contact also posted to many organizations and individuals around the world and free access for all is available online.
Dharamshala is not only home to many Tibetans in exile, but also to Indians and a thriving population of foreign travelers, many of whom visit Dharamshala to offer their time and skills as volunteers. The magazine strives to provide news, both international and local, as well as catering to the needs of visitors to the town. Contact also provides information regarding local resources and volunteer opportunities.
The magazine is written in English as the most accessible language for its readership of Tibetans, Indians and foreign visitors. Each year between 40 and 70 international volunteers write around 160 news and feature articles. Contact magazine is currently published in both paper and digital format, as well as on social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter.
Contact magazine, one of the oldest monthly publications in Dharamshala, has a growing demand and popularity and we continue to receive new subscribers and expressions of appreciation from our readers.
Background
Contact started out as a four-page community information news sheet in 1997. It was initiated by two volunteers from the United States, Mark Moore and Dara Ackerma, working with Tibetan volunteers from Dharamshala. Lobsang Rabsel, Lha’s current Deputy Director, joined the Contact team during its origins. Contact has grown considerably to its current 17 pages of mainly Tibetan news articles.
Since 2004, the Contact team has partnered Lha Charitable Trust, who initially provided office space and other publishing facilities. Our records show that between 2006 and 2012, Contact published over 270 Tibet-related news articles. In May 2012, Lha Charitable Trust took over the complete management of Contact magazine. Two more pages were added to include the Tibetan and International “headlines” feature which enables us to cover extra news items that are not written up as articles. These are updated daily online, providing up to the minute news for our online readers. Lha started the new international headlines feature in 2012 to give our readers the added interest of current world events. A new logo and a new website for Contact were also launched in 2012. Initially the editing was done by long-term volunteers. In early 2013, Jenny James – a volunteer from England was asked to continue with us as our Editor-in-Chief and under her close guidance and support Contact has been able to maintain professionalism in all its reporting. Jenny visits around once a year and edits from her home in England.
Between 2012 and autumn 2017, under Lha’s production, Contact has published 834 news articles on topics which include human right issues inside Tibet, environmental issues, international human rights groups reports on Tibet, the Tibetan Government-in-exile and the activities and teachings of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Visitors to Dharamshala find our listings of the prominent Tibetan non-governmental organizations, accommodation, libraries, and health service information invaluable and the map of McLeod Ganj particularly useful.
The advertisement section at the back of the magazine generates sufficient funds to enable Contact to be self-sustaining, while providing local businesses with the opportunity to promote their products and services. The advertisers particularly appreciate the map of McLeod near the back of Contact indicating their location.
Over the years, the distribution of Contact has extended beyond the Dharamshala region and it is now posted to different Tibetan settlement offices, schools, government and non-government offices and libraries across India. Since September 2013, the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) based in Taiwan has sponsored the publication and postal cost of Contact magazine under its project entitled ‘Contact magazine, Supporting a Free Press for Tibetans-in-Exile.’ We are most grateful for the TFD’s support as it makes today’s 24-page Contact magazine possible.
Contact reached another milestone in 2014 when we started publishing our front and back covers in color. In 2016, in line with our remit to promote democracy, we gave priority to coverage of the elections for Sikyong (or Political Leader of the Tibetan Government-in-Exile) and Chitue (members of Tibetan Parliament-in-exile), with special features and profiles of the candidates, publishing an ‘Election Special’ issue in the run-up to the election.
We give a wide range of volunteers from around the world the opportunity to get involved in the Tibetan struggle by writing for Contact and each year 20 to 40 volunteers write for us. They take their increased awareness home with them at the end of their stay and promote our cause in their home countries.
As a testimony to Tibetans living in exile, Contact started publishing a ‘people’ story in each issue from June 2016 – these are profiles of the people who make up the Tibetan community in exile, particularly those based in Dharamshala. Lha now publicizes its own many community welfare initiatives in the “Lha news” pages of Contact, including neighborhood clean-ups, clean drinking water projects, free healthcare projects and environmental projects. We believe that the more people who know about our community services, the more people in need can access them.
Over the years of Contact’s journey from 1997, around 181,500 copies of the magazine have been printed and circulated free of charge.
Online Readership
The online version of Contact magazine can be found at www.contactmagazine.net, Facebook and Twitter, with around 6,000 website visitors each month. Contact is also freely available on issuu.com where past issues can also be accessed.
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