Jhamtse Gatsal Website Strategy

Jhamtse Gatsal is a residential community and school in Lumla, in the Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh, founded by Lobsang Phuntsok (known within the community as ​“Genla,” meaning teacher) to give vulnerable children in the Himalayan borderlands a home, an education, and a childhood built on love and belonging. Its story reached a global audience through Tashi and the Monk, the Emmy Award-winning short documentary about the community. Jhamtse International is its US-based support and fundraising arm, working alongside a small constellation of affiliated organisations in Switzerland, Australia, and Germany that together sustain the community’s work.

Jhamtse engaged Miranj, in collaboration with design studio Tiffinbox, to reimagine their website — bringing two ageing, decade-old sites run separately by Jhamtse Gatsal and Jhamtse International under one future-proofed presence, together with a refreshed visual identity. The engagement unfolded over several weeks in the autumn of 2021, in sessions with Jhamtse’s leadership, staff, and supporting organisations across the US, India and Europe — mapping a wide constellation of audiences, prioritising website goals, and shaping a solution around five pillars: storytelling, fundraising, a sponsor portal, a virtual tour, and ongoing amplification and engagement.

As part of the engagement, the Miranj team travelled to Jhamtse Gatsal’s campus in Lumla — an uncommonly immersive extension to a strategy engagement, spending time on the ground with the resident children and staff, and meeting Genla in person.

The engagement delivered Jhamtse a clear, prioritised website strategy and information architecture — grounded in a first-hand understanding of the community rare for an engagement of this kind — alongside a refreshed brand identity from Tiffinbox that Jhamtse went on to adopt across its communications. The strategy itself became a useful resource for Jhamtse to plan its future web presence.