Dalai Lama recognizes student’s kindness

UC Irvine student and Estancia High School tutor and mentor Jasmine Fang has been honored for her many selfless acts of kindness with the prestigious XIV Dalai Lama Endowed Scholarship.

The award was created in 2004 to honor students with a record of honesty, integrity, fairness and service to others who propose projects promoting ethics, peace, compassionate leadership, and local and global responsibility.

Fang, a business economics major, will be given a $7,500 scholarship along with $2,500 to support her proposed project, Kindness Month, at UCI. The project will feature activities demonstrating kindness, including designing cards for incarcerated mothers and instruction in making pressed-flower bookmarks.

Those participating also will be asked to sign a “charter of compassion,” in which they will vow to treat others with benevolence. The charter will be sent to the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan spiritual leader.

“I hope to ignite the passion of UCI students, faculty and staff members to volunteer and give back to the community,” Fang said in a release. “A kind gesture can truly make a big difference in our world.”

Fang has a long history of benevolent actions. She spent the summer teaching hygiene and building latrines in rural areas of the Dominican Republic.

Fang also has been a peer consultant at the UCI Career Center and an attendant at the school’s Mesa Court dorms.

She has spent the past year interning at Allergan, through UCI’s SAGE Scholars Program for high achievers.

“Jasmine exemplifies a selfless commitment to the community through her hundreds of hours of tutoring, mentoring and health education in underserved areas,” said UCI Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs Manuel N. Gómez.

Fang, who was born in Taiwan, raised in Texas and attended high school in Torrance, was inspired to apply for the scholarship when she saw the Peace Flag Project created by previous scholarship recipient Rebecca Westerman, in which more than 1,000 flags were hung in the center of campus.