A Nonprofit Supporting Students with Disabilities in Bhutan
A Wheel of Compassion
Bhutan Mindfulness believes that by helping others, we help ourselves. We partner with monks to teach Tibetan Buddhism and raise funds to improve educational outcomes for students with special needs.
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Research indicates that over 85% of Bhutanese without formal education attribute disabilities to the effects of negative karma. This belief particularly affects women and girls, subjecting them to a form of "double discrimination". Bhutan has enacted progressive reforms but lack of funding leaves most children with disabilities with no prospects of social inclusion.
Helping Disabled Children
Though our means would prohibit any large-scale change, we wanted to help. Our initial emphasis was on providing economic relief for those we knew. However, as the employment challenges were more deep-rooted, our focus shifted towards creating sustainable gains. Inspired by the story of Muhammed Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank, we wanted to initiate a project that was self-sustaining, could create jobs, and provide purposeful work.
We then asked: what does Bhutan have that the world needs? We realized it was mindfulness. As a Buddhist nation, the country has 10,000 monks and nuns, many of whom have spent their entire lifetime in thoughtful introspection on how to pacify suffering and create lasting happiness. Our aspiration was to bring this knowledge to the West, and use it to encourage more charitable engagement that would create immense societal gains.
Getting Involved
We seek to partner with SEN schools to expand their ability to enroll, educate and transition children with disabilities. Our efforts began a year ago, and we’ve already reached over 200 students at two schools. Within five years, our goal is to provide support to all 39 SEN schools across Bhutan. To further these aspirations, master monks have graciously offered to share insight on Tibetan Buddhism to foster collaboration and support.
Changing Lives
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Removing Barriers
Special Education Needs (SEN) school are tasked with accepting disabled students but have been offered limited resources to meet the demands. Many lack classrooms, transportation, accessible pathways, bathrooms and vocational equipment. Kids are turned away and stay at home due to resources constraints. Being uneducated makes their ability to integrate into society even harder.
Our first project was to build an accessible bathroom for a public middle school with over 100 special needs children. Parents weren’t sending kids to school because of the bathroom situation and children in wheelchairs had to “hold it all day”. Since we’ve built the bathroom, we’ve seen enrollment increase. Imagine, the difference between a child getting an education or not was dependent on something as simple as a bathroom.