by Junko Taguchi

01 August 2007

Rukha, Bhutan: Chanting resounds across Rukha village, raising the spirits of Olep community members working tirelessly on their housing construction.  Women are chanting while pounding mud and participating enthusiastically in the development of their construction skills.

Rukha is the site of the Integrated Community Development for Poverty Reduction project, funds for which were allocated by the Match against Poverty in 2006.  The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Volunteers programme (UNV) are supporting the project, which is executed locally by the Tarayana Foundation, a non-profit organization.

UNV supported the formation of a Village Volunteer Committee (Tshokpa) to ensure the smooth and effective implementation of the project.  The Tsokpha represents the Olep community as a whole and is a coordination body for self-help development activities, comprising 6 members (four men and 2 women). 

Rukha is a remote village in central Bhutan twelve hours travel from the capital Thimpu, including an eight-hour walk from the nearest road.  There are 18 households in the village and of these 15 houses require construction to secure proper shelter.  Housing construction is one of the project activities in line with skills development.

The basic carpentry and masonry training is being organized hands on, with the villagers – male and female – actually constructing their houses and gaining skills in the process that will later enable them to have a steady income.  Women handling carpentry and masonry are not yet common in Bhutan, therefore the innovative Rukha experience could be a model worthy of replication elsewhere in the country. 

At this stage, there is no systematic cash flow in Rukha.  Thus, under the project, the development of further skills, including crafts skills and improved agricultural techniques, will also be introduced for income generation purposes.

Unique learning opportunity

The Royal Government of Bhutan has been supporting the construction of a Community Primary School which will accommodate Pre-Primary to Class II students from 5 villages, including Rukha.  Pupils have been waiting for the school construction to be completed and to be operational by the next academic year.

Meanwhile, 17 children are learning at the Community Learning Center established by Olep community members in February this year under the ICDPR project.  Representatives of every household participated in the construction of the center.  There, community members are also taking literacy classes – a unique learning opportunity for the first time in their life for most of the villagers.  Naturally children are doing better than their parents; picking up faster.  However the adults are also trying hard to be able to read and write their national language, Dzongkha.

At the same time, while the instructor and trainers from the Construction Training Center are in Rukha to teach carpentry skills, they also organize English lessons.  English is the language of instruction in Bhutan and some of the children can already say the alphabet by now.  The motivation is high, with hopes that education will facilitate a brighter future for members of the Olep community; boys & girls, men & women.