Pai Dawe

Founder

Founder of Donyi Polo Cultural & Charitable Trust

Pai Dawe is the founder of Donyi Polo Cultural & Charitable Trust [1], an Indian non-profit working on arts & culture, education and tribal welfare.

Pai Dawe is an Arunachal Pradesh community leader associated with the Donyi Polo Cultural and Charitable Trust, of which he is vice-chairman. He is president of the Nyishi Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society and an ex-officio member of the Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society of Arunachal Pradesh.

Career

The Donyi Polo Cultural and Charitable Trust was established in 2019 by a group of social workers from indigenous communities in Arunachal Pradesh, with Er. Katung Wahge as its chairman. The trust works with indigenous communities in the state to preserve and promote their cultures through gurukuls, cultural festivals, language research and awareness programmes.

In December 2019 Dawe donated the land at Rang village in East Kameng district for Nyubu Nyagam Yarko, a school established to teach the Nyishi language. The school was designed to follow a gurukul-style system while providing education on the CBSE pattern, run jointly by indigenous faith organisations and Vivekananda Kendra Vidyalayas, and its first academic session began in 2020. At a public meeting in the district he set out the trust's work and its plans, which included the school and a Donyi Polo Khumko, a prayer place for followers of the Donyi-Polo faith.

On 1 December 2019, as president of the Nyishi Indigenous Faith and Cultural Society, Dawe took part in the ceremony at Pasighat in East Siang district marking the start of construction of the Donyi Polo Khumko, explaining that 'khum' means prayer and 'ko' means place.[2][3][4][5]

Donyi Polo Cultural & Charitable Trust

DPCCT works with the indigenous communities of Arunachal Pradesh to preserve and promote their unique cultures. It runs Gurukuls that blend traditional indigenous knowledge with modern academics across multiple locations, alongside indigenous-language development, cultural centres and community health initiatives reaching over 5,000 families.

Donyi Polo Cultural & Charitable Trust reports the following, on its own site: