AAZ & Lamdon
Two organisations, one school
Lamdon is the school. Association Aide au Zanskar is the association that has supported it since 1988. Keeping the two distinct matters — for accuracy, and out of respect for both.
Lamdon Model School
Pibiting–Ufti, Padum, Zanskar · Ladakh, India
- The school, its principal and its teachers
- The students and their families
- Teaching, examinations and results
- The campus at Pibiting–Ufti
- Admissions and daily school life
Association Aide au Zanskar
France · founded 1988
- A supporting association, founded in France in 1988
- Fundraising and institutional partnerships
- Administration of student sponsorship
- Funding and delivery of capital projects
- Summer missions and published reports
The record, and who kept it
In 1988, on a journey through Zanskar, Marc Damiens was asked by parents in the valley to help their children receive a proper education. Association Aide au Zanskar was founded in France in answer to that request, and the first two classes opened the following year in rooms lent by the monastery at Pibiting.
Almost everything written down about the school's early decades was written down by AAZ — in project files, summer mission reports and its own website. That is why much of the historical material on this site is attributed to AAZ and marked as historical: it is a faithful record kept by the organisation that helped build the campus, not a substitute for the school's own current account of itself.
AAZ operates on volunteers and states three values: volunteering, which keeps costs low; respect, defining needs through dialogue with the local population and inside the Indian school curriculum; and transparency, meaning clear objectives and exemplary account management.
The two identities stay separate. Lamdon is the school. AAZ is the association that supports it.
HISTORICALAssociation Aide au Zanskar (AAZ) · 2022 · source · reviewed 2026-09