The PADMA Fellowship is a religious and non- profit foundation with its principal office established in Thimphu, Bhutan under the patronage of H.H Jamyang Khentse Rinpoche. While this foundation aspires to become a well-endowed and dynamic religious organization that will operate to preserve, protect and propagate the Buddha dharma in Bhutan, and at the same time, aims to work with the local communities in realizing and operationalizing the goals of Gross National Happiness of Bhutanese development Philosophy.
Today, this monastery provides free boarding and hostel facilities to over 850 monks especially those coming from economically challenged family background. The monks are enrolled in Lhobda (preprimary school), Sherda (higher learning), Drubda (retreats) and Dratsang, (monastic residents). Further, this monastic community continues to plays fundamental role in serving the local communities through various local pujas, birth and death rituals, and annual pujas thus keeping the web of community network very closely knit.
While managing this institute, we have realized that the demand for usage of firewood in daily chores (like cooking, water heating and heating purposes) and performance of mandatory yearly ritual is alarmingly high i.e. one truckload of firewood is used in day which is equivalent to 3 medium sized standing trees. This current pattern of firewood consumption is not only threatening to our fragile environment but is very expensive for the monastery due to the cost escalation of firewood and transportation. This trend of firewood consumption surely poses challenges in conserving our environment thus posing risk to one of the four pillars of GNH and the goal of conserving 60% forest coverage in Bhutan.
Therefore, the group PADMA Fellowship in partnership with SGP Bhutan carried out the project ?Reducing fuel wood consumption by replacing traditional wood-based mud stoves with bulk electric cookers and solar water heating system? to reduce consumption of firewood and ultimately reducing pressure on surrounding forest and environment.