Design For Change:

Druk School2013

Democracy in Bhutan

Who we are Druk School is located in Changhedaphu with a student body of

708. The 7th grade(A) children christened themselves as “Active

Citizens” to participate in Design For Change. Their project was to empower their friends with information on Bhutanese Democracy.

FEEL The 7th grade children came up with an initiative to educate/ make

aware their friends about Bhutanese democracy because second parliamentary election was about to begin. The project was also taken up because a lot of their senior friends would be participating in 2018 election.

What is Democracy?Definition: The belief in freedom and equality between people, or a system

of government based on this belief, in which power is either held by elected representatives or directly by the people themselves .

imagine The students imagined a way forward to empower their school

friends about democracy. Their Action Plan consisted of:• Designing Educational Posters and displaying them on a notice

board.• Writing poems and personal stories relating to the current political

situation.• Disseminating information regarding democracy to the school

mates through classroom discussion.

DoThis is

their

STORY…

Storm in their Brains=Brainstorming

The Active Citizens preparing Posters

Children engrossed in designing the

posters

Active Citizens -Journal workshop

The children wrote down their personal stories pertaining to the recent election and composed short poems on democracy.

The Active Citizens displaying their posters

The children displayed their posters to educate their school friends. The Notice board gathered a lot of audience (students , teachers and parents who came to pick their children). The children involved in displaying the posters were delighted to see the crowd discussing and debating over the party candidates.

SHARE

Temphel Lhendup, Namgay Wangmo and Ugyen Pema Wangchuk briefing on the recent election and the importance of one’s vote.

Madam Principal (advisor to the “Active Citizens”) informing the assembly about the four political parties contesting for

the primary round. (Video- 1.7 min)

The Active Citizens in Action

The story of the crowd continued…The continues inflow of information on the Active Citizens' Board, the discussion that followed and the briefing in the assembly made the students of Druk School insist their parents to vote in the last Election. The teachers also registered for the postal ballot to exercise their Franchise. Our proactive and sincere contribution in informing the children regarding election and our children pestering their parents resulted in high number of parents voting in the General Election.

This story of school, students and parents coming together to unanimously take part in the recent democratic process was noticed by the Election Commission of Bhutan who contributed Nu 20,000 to set up a democracy Club in the school to further strengthen the mechanism to spread “Democracy Literacy”

What we learned-testimony from the “Active Citizens”

What is democracy. Democracy is a good system of government- People have

a right to choose their own representatives. How a new government is formed. Importance of voting. About the opposition and the ruling party.

We could share these information to our school friends which has only made us feel good; We have changed ourselves and we could changed the way our friends use to think(democracy is bad and politics is dirty) before.

TASHI DELEK!

We had a fantastic time participating in Design for Change.

“Active Citizens” -7th Grade(A) Students, Druk School