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, our partner organisation VTOB is launching the successor to the Digital Literacy Initiative (DLI), which between 2022 and 2025 introduced around 25,000 children at 68 schools to coding. Now the programme goes a step further. Over the next three years, 150 schools, 300 teachers and roughly 50,000 students are to become not merely digitally literate but AI-competent – supported by 810 laptops, specialised teacher training and 150 student-led AI clubs, whose best projects will be showcased each year at a National AI Expo.
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 and Beat Curti Foundation. That they begin with a butter lamp – is unmistakably Bhutanese. s thanks to the continued partnership between The Dariu Foundation and the Regula and Beat Curti Foundation – a partnership that, fittingly, began with a butter lamp.
