Empower Bhutan's Citizens to Engage in Democracy

Advocating for a cause:

The Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy (BCMD) organised a one-day training on August 23 at the BCMD Media Lab on “Advocating for a Cause” for the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Bhutan. The training was in continuation to the ‘Communicating for a cause’ training held from July 28 - 29.

Civil Society Organisations in Bhutan focus their work mostly on advocacy initiatives to bring about social change in the lives of the people of Bhutan. The one-day workshop provided the participants with the skills to improve on their advocacy initiatives and to understand the processes involved in developing an advocacy plan for their respective organisations.

The participants will be developing advocacy plans for their respective organisation and meet in September to discuss further on their plans. 

Communicating for a cause:

The Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy (BCMD) organised a two-day training from July 28 - 29 at the BCMD Media Lab on “Communicating for a Cause” for the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) in Bhutan.

The two-day training provided the participants with an insight into new media tools and essential skills in preparing a communication plan for their respective organisation. The training also provided an opportunity for the CSO members to share and learn through the interaction they had during the various group activities.

The resource person for the two-day training is a media production specialist and trainer. 

The Health Minister also paid a surprise visit and following his visit, officials from the health ministry also paid a visit and expressed their interest in collaborating with the CSOs in Bhutan.

Youth Initiative (YI) summer training:

summer training for the 2016 batch of Youth Initiative (YI) was held for three days from July 9- 11 at the Bhutan Centre for Media and Democracy's Media Lab.Participants were oriented on sessions such as service learning, team building and active listening. The other two integral part of the summer training were the reflective sessions on the local actions such as waste management in Paro, project clean Samtse and young writers' society. Members also discussed what they learned being youth representative.

On the last day, youth representatives met the YI steering committee members and discussed about the way forward for YI.

"YI has given the youth an opportunity to acquire new skills which has helped them be better decision makers in their personal life. YI has helped youth improve their communications skills, their ability to discuss topical issues, their organisational skills, their understanding of how to become more active young citizens. These skills go beyond the initial focus on debating issues."    

- A steering committee member.

Goggle Apps training for Youth and Civil Society Organisations(CSOs):

The Google applications training was held from June 6 - 9 at the Media Lab at Nazhoen Pelri Complex. The 30 participants were instructed by Judith Lau from Google and Gregory Lamoureux, who manages a driverless train control system project in Singapore.

Even though participants had heard about and used Google apps such as Gmail on a regular basis; they learned about Google’s other services including Search, Sites, Docs and more. Through this workshop, participants also learned how to use and apply Google Apps like Google Contacts and Google Drive.

As part of the program, groups of participants prepared presentations on what they learned. The participants who ranged from college students to Civil Society Organisation members can now use Google apps in the workplace and to promote their companies. Participants can also do research using Google Scholar, make better presentations and manage their work online- while storing and sharing their works in the cloud.