We are a global community making mindfulness and emotional intelligence practical and accessible. Together we are working toward a more peaceful world in which all people feel connected and act with compassion.
It’s humbling any time we can apply our vision. We’ve found this especially rewarding in Bhutan, a nation with a heritage steeped in mindfulness and where happiness is considered integral to its society, reflected by being the first country to implement a Gross National Happiness Index. In Bhutan, the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute was engaged to train all 10,000 school teachers and 18,000 civil servants in the nation.
Let’s begin our story with Bhutan educators.
SIYLI Partners with Bhutan Ministry of Education
As we reported in 2018, we teamed with the Ministry of Education in the nation of Bhutan to train and certify 125 of its educators to teach the Search Inside Yourself (SIY) program, the science-based mindfulness and emotional intelligence curriculum developed and tested at Google.
In an interview with SIYLI CEO Rich Fernandez, Minister Norbu Wangchuck from the Ministry of Education shared, “Bhutan has approximately 2,500 years of heritage that really focuses on important values: on empathy, on tolerance, on interdependence. And so, we in Bhutan take these values very seriously, at a societal level and especially so in educating our children. We now want to explore new ways of presenting or kindling these values.”
Minister Wangchuck praised the real and near-term benefits of the Search Inside Yourself program stating, “It is already having an impact on them [teachers] personally and definitely professionally…enabling them to be more empathetic, more understanding, more tolerant.”
The nine-month training program delivered 125 educators certified to teach the SIY Program. With the support of the Royal Bhutan government, these 125 certified teachers will instruct SIY to all 10,000 educators in Bhutan beginning in July 2019. This initial phase of the program was funded by SIYLI’s co-founder Chade-Meng Tan in early 2018.
The success of this SIY Program is just the beginning of SIYLI’s journey in Bhutan.
Teachers trained in the Search Inside Yourself program bring mindfulness and emotional intelligence practices to schools in Bhutan.
Bhutan Introduces the SIY Program to all Government Ministries
Early in 2019, SIYLI was invited by the Bhutan Royal Civil Services Commission (RCSC) to help meet Bhutan’s vision of training all civil servants in the Search Inside Yourself program. This opportunity is primarily credited to the positive word of mouth from the successful 2018 teacher training with the Ministry of Education.
SIYLI signed an agreement with RCSC to offer another teacher training program to identify and certify 125 government employees who would subsequently train their peers. In effect, SIYLI will certify teachers in every Bhutanese ministry. Once the new SIY certified teachers graduate in the first quarter of 2020, they will then teach the SIY Program to all the remaining 18,000 civil servants in the country. This initiative with the RCSC will successfully build upon the work with the Ministry of Education and as continuation of that work is also generously sponsored by co-founder Chade-Meng Tan. By mid-2020, it is our hope that every Bhutanese civil servant will have experienced and participated in the program.
In March, 2018 the Royal Civil Service Commission (RCSC) and the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to train Bhutanese civil servants with SIYLI’s neuroscience-based mindfulness and emotional intelligence training.
SIYLI’s Global Footprint
Bhutan is SIYLI’s first country-wide training program. It is another example of SIYLI’s proven training to reduce stress, improve focus, raise peak performance and improve interpersonal relationships. SIYLI began as a mindful leadership initiative within Google. Today, SIYLI has spread to over 50 countries around the world. SIY is a globally recognized program and continues to bring mindfulness, emotional intelligence and compassionate leadership to individuals and organizations around the world.
If you would like to bring the Search Inside Yourself program to your team, organization, city or country, do not hesitate to let us know.