Livelihood Skills Training
WWF also offers skills-based training in Bhutan for young women who are poor farmers and have dropped out of school early. We instruct them on income-generating activities such as tailoring and mushroom cultivation - jobs that have minimal impact on the environment and are designed to replace more harmful practices like cutting down and burning trees to sell for charcoal or fuelwood.

Like most villages in Bhutan, Kungarabten rests on the terraced slopes of mountains that climb several thousand feet into the sky. WWF works in this place because 90% of the farmers living there are sharecroppers and often cannot produce enough food for the community. Food shortages are widespread and can last for months.

I first visited the tailoring school in the community center of this very small and peaceful village. Two teachers were hired from a tailoring school in Thimpu and had recently finished the first round of training with four sewing machines purchased through the program. The women learned to stitch basic items such as tegos - part of a girl's dress, bags, cushion covers and coasters. As the women become more skilled they will be able to sell their products for a profit. They also hope to establish their own business and earn enough money to buy their own sewing machines and then send their children to school.

The timing of this training is crucial because next year a new eco-tourism trail will be opened from Kungarabten in commemoration of the centennial celebrations of the Wangchuck dynasty. This is very encouraging for the project as there will soon be a ready market of tourists.
Like the women being trained in tailoring, those learning mushroom cultivation are poor, uneducated and cannot support their children's schooling. To reverse this trend, the Girls' Scholarship Program partnered with the local government to provide seeds and training. The women learn how to prepare straw that grows naturally in their fields and would have traditionally been discarded. The straw is then molded into solid blocks where seeds are implanted. Within a couple of months, the mushrooms will be ready for sale in the community markets and for home use. One block of straw generates about 80 rupees - or $2 - and is a source of income where there once was none.

With help from the government's agriculture department and the support of WWF, the women hope to scale up their production to 200 households. Mushroom cultivation is a new practice in the community and the women seemed particularly interested because it is simple, inexpensive and has the potential to be very lucrative. It is also added security in a location threatened by food shortages.

Breaking the Cycle
Upon landing in Paro I began my two-day journey to the eastern part of the country where our Girls' Scholarship Program is located. In Bhutan, the "Land of the Thunder Dragon," you get nowhere fast. On winding roads, we climbed up and down steep mountains, passing cattle, people, boulders, rock slides, waterfalls, snakes and traditional Buddhist monuments. Ground transportation is death-defying, albeit spectacular.

In Bhutan, the government provides education to all children, but parents or caretakers must supply food, books, uniforms and toiletries. Access to schooling is a problem for girls worldwide, many of whom don't get more than basic lessons. As women they are responsible for managing important household resources like water and firewood, but most of them don't know how to use their natural resources sustainably. WWF's program helps girls and women realize their potential and make more responsible conservation decisions.

The 20 girls who are supported through the program in Bhutan have all lost one or both of their parents. Without outside help, their caretakers could not afford the supplies needed to send them to school. This predicament was communicated quite clearly by one mother in particular, Uygen, who explained that she had hiked for four hours up a mountain to meet me and tell her story. She said with great remorse, "I had three girls, but could not take care of them after my husband died." She and her husband had been raising their girls on a farm located on a steep mountain slope. When her husband died 12 years ago, she was unable to keep the wild boars, deer and birds from destroying her crops. Her farm became fallow and she couldn't afford repairs to her home which became dilapidated and uninhabitable.

Consequently, she moved to a labor camp near one of the main roads in search of work. Roads are constantly being repaired in Bhutan, causing many people to migrate nearby in search of wage labor. Now she lives with her brother in the camp and works on the side of the road crushing rocks for construction while her daughters attend nearby schools through the Girls' Scholarship program. She explained, "my daughters cry every time they come to see me, because they have no place to sleep." Without WWF support she said, they would have a future just like hers: uneducated and powerless.

The Mountain Kingdom
During my flight to Bhutan to visit program sites there, I had time to reflect on how grateful I was for the help of WWF-Nepal staff. While the monsoon stymied my mission to evaluate the Girls' Scholarship Programs in southern Nepal, I gained incredible first-hand insight into the lives of the girls, teachers and staff who live and work in challenging conditions.

Throughout the monsoon, Rajendra Gurung, Senior Planning & Monitoring Officer in the Nepalgunj office, chose to stay in a separate location closer to the communities and WWF field staff so that he could be at the their service and help demonstrate WWF's devotion to their wellbeing. Sabita Thapa, Manager of Program Development & Support in the Kathmandu office, worked tirelessly - always with a smile - to gather information about possible escape routes and changes in weather that would give us the opportunity to flee the rains.

My thoughts on my Nepalese colleagues were interrupted by the captain's announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, we are about to begin our descent into Paro, Bhutan. If you happen to look out your window and see us flying by mountains that are closer than you've ever seen in your life, please do not scream." Our plane veered left and tilted right between closely conjoined 12,000 foot Himalayan Mountains.

Just 20 minutes earlier we had flown by Mount Everest and Nepal's Kagchenjunga Conservation Area where WWF hosts one of its Girls' Scholarship Program sites. It was amazing to see the 30,000 foot peaks at eye-level.

From the air, the one airport appears to be the only flat space in the whole country of Bhutan, and it is closely surrounded on all sides by steep mountains.

Water, Water Everywhere!
Over the next couple of days, I was supposed to visit some of the students, teachers and families of WWF's Girls' Scholarship Program in southwestern Nepal's Bardia National Park region, but that night the strong rains of the monsoon season arrived.

In the morning the floodwaters were still low, so our hosts arranged a wildlife safari for us since the rains prevented us from traveling. In the torrential downpour we mounted a pair of elephants, hoping to spot a rhino or tiger. But these animals were nowhere to be seen as they had likely taken shelter or moved to higher ground to escape the floods. We finally came to a river the elephants were supposed to cross, but they stopped because the water was too high. Elephants are extremely intelligent and will refuse to go places they know are not safe. As we stood there watching the raging river it was agreed that the elephants knew best, so we promptly turned around and returned to our lodge. For the next three days we were trapped by the monsoon.

By the third day, our lodge was running out of food and water. When the rain finally began to let up a little we took a chance and left the lodge. If we didn't make it to an airport that day we would likely be stranded on the flooded roads.

We started our departure on the backs of elephants, riding for over an hour through deeply impoverished communities who had suffered severe flood damage to their homes and crops. Two trucks and a river-crossing later, we made it to the airport in Nepalgunj -- only an hour flight from Kathmandu. The snow-capped Himalayan Mountains guided our way to the north as we left the Terai -- "the fearful place" -- to the south. From the plane I could see the swollen rivers that submerged rice fields under several feet of water. I wondered if the people living in mud huts with grass roofs were all right and if their subsistence crops were going to survive this deluge.

As it turned out, these rains lasted for two weeks and were the worst in recent history. In southern Nepal it is estimated that floods and landslides displaced 127,000 people and that at least 26,500 houses were damaged or destroyed. Monsoons are an important part of the ecosystem in Nepal and are not in themselves a bad thing. WWF’s efforts in the region are strengthening local communities and their environment so that future monsoons will not come at such a high human price.