Preserving Tibetan Heritage
Terma Heritage Foundation preserves Tibetan and Himalayan cultural heritage through technology, arts, education, and community programs — from children’s songs to digital language tools, from master calligraphy to sacred audio restoration.
Building on thirteen years of cultural preservation
Since 2012, we have supported cultural organizations and performing artists, built digital tools for the Tibetan language, preserved sacred audio and visual heritage, and produced educational resources used by communities around the world.
“The deeper meaning of these teachings can be understood only in Tibetan; it cannot be fully conveyed in other languages. Therefore, everyone must pay special attention to the Tibetan language.”His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Statement on the Protection of the Tibetan Language, March 11, 2026
Read the full statement →
1,000,000+ children
Tibetan children in Chinese-occupied Tibet are forced into state boarding schools where their language is banned and replaced with Mandarin. An entire generation is being cut off from its mother tongue.
Vanishing heritage
Ancient manuscripts, sacred art, and oral traditions are disappearing. Monasteries have been destroyed. Elders who carry living memory of pre-1959 Tibet are passing away. Without urgent action, this knowledge is gone forever.
A civilization at stake
Over a millennium of Tibetan philosophy, medicine, astronomy, and Buddhist scholarship — one of humanity’s great knowledge systems — risks being erased within a single generation.
How We Preserve
We work at every stage of cultural survival — from rescue to renewal.
Rescue & Digitize
Recovering recordings, manuscripts, and oral histories before the elders who hold them pass and the originals decay.
Build Infrastructure
Creating the tools communities need to read, write, and study in their own script — because the Tibetan internet does not yet work the way it should.
Nurture the Next Generation
Making Tibetan joyful for children, so the language survives in the mouths of the young — not only in archives.
Sustain Living Culture
Keeping Tibetan culture vibrant as a living tradition — through elders, artists, and the gatherings that hold a community together.
Just Launchedv1.0.2 · Free & Open Source
TermaType
གཏེར་མ་ཡིག་སྦྱོར།
The first word processor built from the ground up for bilingual Tibetan and English writing. Type in Wylie, get Tibetan Unicode. 100% offline.
Wylie → Tibetan
239K+ dictionary
100% offline
Beyond the Archive
Living Traditions
Preservation is not only digital. We produce children’s songs in the mother tongue, sustain performing arts groups in exile, document lute melodies passed down only by ear, and create moments where the culture is lived — not just stored.
Explore Our Programs
Help Us Preserve a Civilization's Voice
Your support funds children's educational materials, digital language tools, community programs, and the cultural infrastructure that keeps Tibetan language and heritage alive.