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Jetsun Pema, younger sister of His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, said education is “the most important force” that can empower young people.

Pema, the recipient of Randolph College’s Pearl S. Buck Award during a recent ceremony which featured a few hundred guests, remained true to that belief as she dedicated most of her life to educating children in exile from Tibet.

In an interview, Pema told The News & Advance that she feels “very privileged” to win the award, but gave credit to all the people who helped along the way with the Tibetan children in exile.

“In the last 65 years, we have brought along a lot of young people who are educated,” she said, adding education was the main goal.

“And because of ‘His Holiness,’ the Dalai Lama ... he always feels that the children are the future seeds for any nation. So nurturing the seed for the future was a priority on the list of things that he had to do, when he came into exile.”

The Pearl S. Buck Award is given to women who “exemplify the ideals, values and commitments of Buck.” The honor, which was reinstituted this spring, is named for the first American woman to receive the Nobel Prize for literature and a member of the then-Randolph-Macon Women’s College class of 1914.

Randolph College President Sue Ott Rowlands said, in a release announcing Pema as the winner, the college is honored to present her with the award for her advocacy and support of the children’s villages in Tibet.

“I cannot think of a more worthy recipient given Pearl S. Buck’s dedication to children and education in China,” Ott Rowlands said.

Before Pema was presented with the award, Suzanne Bessinger — associate professor of religious studies — said during the ceremony when she arrived on campus 13 years ago, it wasn’t long before she learned about Buck.

Bessinger mentioned “The Good Earth,” a novel written by Buck, and it being one of her earliest introductions to China itself. She said Buck not only played an “incomparable role” in changing the way Americans understood Chinese life and culture, but she was also a champion of civil rights.

Bessinger said when she was picked to be on the selection committee for the Pearl S. Buck Award, only one name came to mind — Pema.

“I am honored that these auspicious connections have brought Jetsun Pema to Randolph College today, as she really epitomizes the tradition of service and compassion that the Pearl S. Buck Award recognizes,” she said.

Pema served as president of the Tibetan Children’s Villages (TCV) from 1964 to 2006. The TCV, which took in and cared for orphaned, destitute and refugee children, is located in Dharamshala, in northeast India.

Recognized as the “Mother of Tibet,” Pema was born in 1940 in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, where her older brother already had been recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama.

Pema said she was in Lhasa until the age of nine and during that time, communists hadn’t occupied their country, describing life as normal and carefree.

She said, however, with the news of the Chinese coming to the border of Tibet, Pema’s mother sent her and other family to India for school.

“So, I left Tibet when I was 9 years old and went to school, which is run by Irish Catholic nuns in Kalimpong, and they educated me till the age of 20,” she said, adding it was a tough transition but the nuns who ran the school took “good care” of her.

“In Tibet, everything is different, you know, from India. So as a child, moving, leaving the home, leaving your mother coming to India, it was quite a difficult period but at the same time, I think Tibetans by nature, are built in such a way that we adapt to the situation.”

Pema said she returned to India in early 1963; and with her sister being sick, Pema was asked by the Dalai Lama to take care of the TCV. When she began, the TCV received refugee children from Nepal.

“Every day we would receive like 80, 50, 100 children ... All of them malnutritioned with diarrhea, and it was really terrible in the early 60s, but then, thanks to the help of the government of India and many voluntary agencies from all over the world, we got the help, and slowly things improved,” she said.

Pema said TCV started with 800 children and each year, the number increased, forcing them to expand school.

To date, 53,000 children have passed through the TCV and are scattered throughout the world, Pema explained.