Thimphu, 1 April 2026
On the morning of 1 April, butter lamps were burning in the Bhutanese capital Thimphu, a monk was reciting the blessings of the traditional Marchang ceremony – and a few minutes later the conversation had turned to machine learning, computer vision and neural networks. Few images could capture DigiGyel – Building AI-Ready Youth and Schools more precisely: tradition and future, spirituality and code, the Himalayan highlands and high tech.
With DigiGyel, VTOB – The Dariu Foundation’s partner organisation in Bhutan – is launching the successor to the Digital Literacy Initiative (DLI). Between 2023 and 2025, the DLI trained 206 teachers and introduced more than 11,290 children at 60 schools across 19 dzongkhags to coding. The national coding competition that grew out of it has been run by the Ministry of Education itself since 2025.
Now the programme goes a step further – and the cue comes from the state. The Bhutan Education Technology Framework 2025 writes artificial intelligence into national teaching standards and sets out, under Standard 8, what an AI-capable teacher must know. Until now there was no mechanism to train one. DigiGyel is that mechanism: by 2028, one teacher in every one of Bhutan’s 500 government schools will be trained as a master trainer and will pass those skills on to colleagues within their own school. Alongside that come 810 laptops, a Dariu Tech Club in every school, and a National AI Expo showcasing the best of the 2,500 pupil projects expected. By the end of 2028, 100,000 pupils are to gain foundational AI skills.
The name itself makes the ambition plain: Digi for the digital, Gyel for nation and victory. A play on words that doesn’t hide what it’s after.
“AI is developing rapidly and will affect everyone on this planet,” says Thomas Trüb, Founder and President of The Dariu Foundation. “Children need to learn how to use it early – and that includes those in the countryside. They deserve the same opportunities as everyone else.”
That these opportunities are now taking concrete shape in Bhutan is thanks to the continued partnership between The Dariu Foundation and the Regula und Beat Curti Stiftung. That it begins with a butter lamp – is unmistakably Bhutanese.
