As a part of The Fund for Innovation and Transformation (FIT) initiative, the Bhutan Canada Foundation, in partnership with the Bhutan Center for Media and Democracy (BCMD), have been selected as one out of 10 small and medium organizations (SMOs) from across Canada who have designed an innovation to improve the lives of women and girls from around the world. FIT is unique in that it supports solutions at the testing phase. It provides Canadian SMOs from different sectors the opportunity to test new or improved practices, policies and approaches with local partners. The fund also provides a platform for selected organizations to share their learnings with each other and eventually others in the innovation and international development sectors.

The innovative solution that BCF and BCMD is testing will use a Design Thinking methodology to engage and encourage collaboration among groups of marginalized women, People with Disabilities, and vulnerable youth with policymakers to identify social protection issues and develop practical policy solutions to positively impacting the Bhutanese people. This approach to the policy process is unique within the Bhutanese context where historically, policy design has very much been a top-down, government, expert-driven and isolated approach. The proposed solution will engage women and other marginalized groups to promote a cross-sectoral collaboration allowing for an effective and inclusive impact on the policy process. This will empower women as their voices are directly incorporated into the policy process in a manner that has not occurred before. This testing project will look to achieve a more inclusive and participatory policy process that will lead to better-informed policies and programs that address real needs and issues.

The project, entitled Democracy Beyond Elections: Participatory Policy Through Design Thinking, will run over a 12 month period from May 2022- April 2023 and will ultimately contribute to Sustainable Development Goal #10: Reducing Inequality.

Read about the other projects here: FIT Intake 5 Industry Release EN

For more information, please contact tenzing@bhutancanada.org