Bridge To Bhutan

Project Hope
Not just a helping hand but also a bridge back to mainstream society

The National Commission for Women and Children (NCWC), with support from Save The Children fund (SCF) will set up Bhutan’s first transitional shelter for children, who are homeless, abused, neglected, emotionally disturbed or face other difficult circumstances.

Called ‘Project Hope – putting children first’, the need for such a shelter, NCWC officials said, was felt after seeing increasing numbers of children begging in different parts of Thimphu and boys and girls being exploited as cheap labour.

For instance, about 15 boys, some as young as five years, at the Thimphu crematorium, beg daily or dive into the river to pick up money thrown with cremation ashes. Some of these boys live in the neighbourhood, while others are orphans, who seek refuge with their relatives at night.

There is also an increasing number of children begging at the vegetable market on weekends, say Thimphu residents.

Children as young as 10, to survive, also work at motor vehicle workshops and restaurants in Thimphu. (more…)

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Without boarding or teacher’s quarter facilities, it’s a 10 km hike back and forth

Going to school in remote Bhutan involves hours of walking. In Samcholing, Trongsa, it is not just some students either.

The 121 students and 10 teachers of the recently upgraded lower secondary school walk uphill for hours to their school without boarding or teacher’s quarter facilities. Located above the main Samcholing village, there is no settlement around for teachers to rent houses and all the 16 teaching and non-teaching staff walk five and half km every day to reach the school. Some students walk about 10 km.

The only female teacher in the school, Shoba G, stays in Kuengarabten. “I wake up at 5 am every morning and walk for an hour and a half to reach school,” she said.

The 2.7 km farm road that connects the school from the Trongsa-Zhemgang highway is not pliable.

Farmers of Samcholing, who live on a sharecropping system and own little land of their own, are not happy too. “We’re the least developed people and our children have no bordering facilities,” said a 52-year-old father. “If the school wasn’t in our village, our children would avail hostel facilities in Taktse middle secondary school,” said another villager. (more…)

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Centrepiece is poverty reduction. Attention to agriculture and allocation of resources are the unique features of this plan

The 10th Plan has generated unprecedented interest and debate in the history of development planning in Bhutan. Political exigencies have contributed to this debate in a newly established democratic setup. On many occasions, the political discussion loses out to academic merits and demerits of the issues involved. As a student of economics I have only academic interest in the nature of 10th FYP.

In my opinion, the 10th FYP is a major departure from earlier development plans in at least two perspectives: first, it is the first time the issue of poverty reduction finds a central place in the planning process; second, the allocation of resources across the dzongkhags is based on more objectively defined criteria. (more…)

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Although on track to achieve the millennium development goals’ (MDGs) health targets, Bhutan is challenged with low levels of skilled birth attendance.

“Bhutan’s skilled birth attendance, which is 56 percent, is a critical challenge,” said a WHO representative during the high-level consultation held in Ahmedabad, India, to accelerate progress towards achieving maternal and child health (MNCH) – goals 4 and 5 of the MDGs. (more…)

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