On 31 January 2020, the Bhutan Nyö Foundation (BNF) singed a MoU with the Department of Culture to begin a scholarship program known as the Bhutan Heritage Scholarship.
The scholarship facilitated and put together by BNF is a fully funded scholarship program with funding support from Central European University (CEU) one of the top universities in Europe and the Association for International Solidarity for Asia (ASIA) Foundation based in Rome, Italy dedicated to preservation and promotion of Himalayan culture and heritage.
This scholarship is an activity under the Nyö Initiative for Culture and Heritage, which recognises the importance of the preservation of Bhutan’s culture and heritage for a sustainable practice of traditional religion, its principles and values to foster an enlightened societies in the country.
Therefore, the scholarship is offered as an agency-tied project aimed at enhancing professional expertise in the employees of the Department of Culture as a government body overlooking the preservation and promotion of Bhutan’s culture and heritage. This is because it is crucial for the officials in the department to be professionally trained to understand, interpret and manage the complexities of the culture and heritage for Bhutan as dedicated body of the government.
The scholarship which will begin from the 2020 fall intake for the academic year 2020-2021 will within next 10 years support at least five deserving candidates from the department to study in CEU for two years leading to Masters of Arts in Cultural Heritage Studies majoring in research, policy and management.
The Director General of the Department of Culture thanked the BNF, and its funding partners for this unprecedented exemplary efforts to assist the department in its capacity development despite being a very new foundation without any financial capacity. The Director General assured that the scholarship will be invested in the outstanding and well deserving candidates in the department to ensure best use of the initiative.
The acting sacretary of BNF, Samten Yeshi thanked the Department of Culture for extending the hand to join together towards shared concern and the funding partners CEU and ASIA for bestowing trust and confidence in BNF for supporting the initiative to make this dream a reality.
The initiative was conceptualised in 2018 which was materialised in 2019 receiving a confirmed support from the two funding partners. The first scholar selected through this scholarship initiative will be in CEU Vienna, Austria by September this year to begin the study.