Retired teachers, Taree on Manning Rotary Club and others behind "Books for Bhutan"

The "Books for Bhutan" story starts with Barb Roberts, a retired teacher, deputy principal and principal of more than 30 years. In 2017 she volunteered as an English/reading teacher in Bhutan and was placed in a remote valley in the central area of Bumthang, at a place called Tang. The school is a large boarding facility of 550 children.

The following year Barb was joined by Chris Godman. Chris had also worked for the Department of Education for more than 30 years and was the principal of Moorland Public School for 11 years prior to retiring.

Early in 2018, Barb approached Taree on Manning Rotary Club with a request to assist with the moving of donated resources to Tang Central School. In 2019, Barb and Chris returned to Tang Central School with very heavy, slightly overweight suitcases and five pallets of books and teaching and educational resource materials (500kgs) that had been transported with the assistance of Taree on Manning Rotary Club to Tang Central School.

But getting these resources to Tang was a long and complicated process.

The books were packed by Taree on Manning Rotary Club volunteers onto pallets which were moved to Wauchope to be transported to the Rotary International depot in Castle Hill, Sydney - where they sat for more than a year while the logistics of getting them to Bhutan was investigated.

A chance meeting with Helen Somogyi from Globelink International in Sydney finally made this project come to fruition. She organised the shipping of the books from Sydney to Bangkok before they were flown to Paro, the only international airport in Bhutan. She coordinated the arrival of the books to be the day before Barb and Chris arrived on October 11, 2019.

Meanwhile, Barb and Chris flew from Kathmandu into Paro - a magnificent journey past all the major Himalayan peaks - to be met by Yeshey, the Tang School driver with his ute. Yeshey had packed half the books into the ute, leaving just enough room for Barb and Chris to squeeze in.

"We then drove the 350km, a 12 hour trip, to Tang," Barb said. "Yeshey returned on the 24 hour round trip to collect and deliver the remaining resources, two days later. A single load was way too heavy for driving up and down the Himalayan mountains over very, very windy roads."

But the two volunteer teachers arrived at a special moment.

The morning after they arrived, the school's head teacher of English Karma Lharzen, asked for their assistance to set up the newly designated Special Education Needs classroom. Tang Central School had been chosen as a centre for Special and Inclusive Education and in two days there were about 20 dignitaries from the Ministry of Education in Thimphu (capital of Bhutan) and from the local Bumthang Dzongkhag (administration centre) coming to the opening ceremony.

"To our amazement we were taken to a very empty room," Barb said. "This was a challenge.

"Chris and I began in earnest, unpacking many of the resources suitable to be put in a special needs room - big books, hands-on maths and literacy equipment, fine motor skills activities, readers and talking and listening resources.

"Chris had brought two iPads and a laptop computer that had lots of educational programs installed on them with a focus on the needs of special education students. By Tuesday afternoon the room was ready for the Wednesday opening ceremony."

With the delivery of the books and resources - and the special needs set-up - completed, Barb and Chris moved onto the second project, the library.

"The students at Tang had a very limited number of English books, most were quite old and many far too difficult for the students to read. In the 'book' shipment were a few thousand picture books and some novels," Barb said.

"These were organised and put on display in the library, much to the delight of all 550 students. The picture books were very, very popular with all the children, even year 10."

Their final task was to organise and demonstrate the teaching resources, which like books, are very limited in Bhutan.

"The English teachers began using these immediately. Big books, not seen by the children before, were read together and enjoyed."

Barb and Chris started in this project because they share a passion for education, a desire for imparting their love of literature and enjoy sharing their teaching skills and strategies with others. "We realised that the approaches we use in our schools in Australia could enhance the teaching of English in a country where English is the 'language of education'," Barb said.

All students in Bhutan start school at six years of age and are taught in English. English is their second or third language and only very few parents in rural Bhutan speak English and are literate.

In a footnote to this story, Taree on Manning Rotary Club has received the support of the Rotary District in a new project to send a Vocational Training Team headed by Barbara - plus supporting materials - to Bhutan to set up libraries in schools there, at a cost of about AUD $45,000.

The Kingdom of Bhutan, Druk Yul, meaning "Land of the Thunder Dragon," is a landlocked country in Asia, located in the Eastern Himalayas. It is bordered to the north by Tibet and to the south by India. Bhutan is a Buddhist kingdom with a population of around 750,000 people.

In 1972 the greatly admired 4th King, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, introduced Gross National Happiness (GNH) as the key theory for governing the country. Gross National Happiness includes good governance, sustainable development, preservation and promotion of culture and environmental conservation.

All Bhutanese people receive free education and medical care from their government. In Bhutan the government requires that at least 70 per cent of the country remains forested meaning that Bhutan is the only country in the world that is carbon negative.

Bhutan has a compulsory national dress code. Men wear a traditional, knee-length garment called a gho and women wear ankle-length skirt called a kira. The Bhutanese are very proud of their culture, wearing national dress to school, work, on their farms, for religious events and when in public.

Television and the internet were not introduced until 1999. Plastic bags have been banned since 1999. Tobacco was been banned in 2005, making Bhutan the world's first smoke-free nation. There are no traffic lights in Bhutan.

"We are extremely confident that the support given has made a difference to the children's education," Barb said.

"Throughout my three years of volunteer work in Bhutan I have witnessed a total dedication by Bhutanese teachers to continue the programs that have been initiated in their school.

"In 2017 I had taken a phonics program that one of the Tang teachers was using with the lower grades. He then trained 50 local teachers to use this program. The Ministry of Education in Bhutan is now recommending the use of this program to teach all younger children phonics across Bhutan."

Barb said she is in regular contact with numerous teachers, providing ongoing support and answering their questions re teaching and learning strategies. "Our dreams and ambitions are that any projects undertaken in Bhutan become fully sustainable, the phonics one has - wonderful."

Next Barb and Chris plan to return to Bhutan and work with school staff, librarians and library support personnel in four districts presenting library philosophy, the best use of the library to develop student literacy, library classification system to label and organise books, to digitise library collections, to implement a simple borrowing system and present practical teaching/learning strategies. They plan to do in school training for English and library staff and share ideas allowing the school libraries.

Taree on Manning Rotary Club has very generously once again offered its support for this library program, Barb said. "It was idea we had discussed and looked into but with Rotary support, the project will hopefully include the donation of many resources to poor rural schools."

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