In 1999, while pursuing graduate studies at Oxford University, Phuntsho established the Loden Foundation, an initiative that began as an educational charity for rural Bhutanese children. The foundation was inspired by a small and very personal act of generosity: a college porter that Phuntsho had befriended, moved by stories of impoverished students in Bhutan and knowing from experience what it was like not to have money for education, gave Phuntsho £50 saved over the course of a year from his modest earnings.

This seed inspired Phuntsho to create Loden—its name means “possessing intelligence”, though it is grounded in the Buddhist belief that empowerment through education is the greatest gift. With support from Phuntsho’s mentor and other friends, the Loden Foundation was able to reach out to individuals on the fringes of Bhutan’s society and raise funds in the UK.

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Loden has grown into a national organisation addressing Bhutan’s most pressing challenges through a multifaceted approach. “We evolved to do other things as Bhutan faced new challenges,” Phuntsho says.

Phuntsho expanded the foundation’s scope to include youth entrepreneurship and cultural documentation. “We evolved to do other things as Bhutan faced new challenges,” he explained. Among these challenges was a burgeoning private sector that required a moral compass to avoid the excesses of unbridled capitalism. Loden follows a philosophy of “Buddhist entrepreneurship,” a framework marrying ethical business practices with cultural and spiritual values.

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Since its formal establishment in 2008, the foundation has funded 295 entrepreneurs, created 860 jobs, and trained 5,750 aspiring business leaders. Notably, 97 of the funded entrepreneurs are women—a reflection of Loden’s commitment to gender equity.

The foundation’s educational initiatives have also been transformative. Through its scholarships and rural outreach programmes, Loden has supported the education of 219 students, awarded 98 scholarships, and established five preschools in underserved regions, bridging critical gaps for marginalised communities. 

As for the long-term impact of Loden’s work, Phuntsho points to the number of graduates from colleges, technical and training institutes, and youth centres—and also in the marginally decreasing number of Bhutanese emigrating.

There is another facet to Phuntsho’s work, born out of his love for Himalayan culture. A scholar with advanced degrees from Balliol College, Oxford, and postdoctoral affiliations at CNRS in Paris and Cambridge University, Phuntsho spent years studying ancient Tibetan and Bhutanese texts.

After graduating, Phuntsho worked at Cambridge to study and assess the manuscript collections from the British Library, focusing on the Waddell Younghusband’s collection of blockprints and manuscripts assembled during the military expedition to Tibet from 1903 to 1904. This work inspired a further revelation: the need to safeguard Bhutan’s endangered intangible heritage.

“Studying the text was not representative enough to understand the transpass,” he noted. To capture the full spectrum of Bhutanese culture, Phuntsho embarked on a monumental project to digitise oral traditions. The Loden Foundation has since recorded over 3,348 hours of oral culture, digitised 4.55 million pages of texts from 76 libraries, and archived 150,000 images of Bhutanese art and artefacts. His team has also documented folk songs, botanical knowledge, and culinary recipes, ensuring that these ephemeral fragments of culture are preserved for future generations.

This work is part of the foundation’s broader mission to protect Bhutan’s heritage from the incursions of modernity. Phuntsho and his team employ innovative approaches such as geographic information systems (GIS) for cultural mapping, along with storytelling workshops to engage younger generations.

He tells a story to illustrate the importance of this facet of his work. “One of the most fulfilling, perhaps because we might have intervened at an opportune time, was in 2010 when we were on our way to digitise the archives of a monastery about a two-hour drive from Thimpu, but the monsoon showers washed the road away. My colleagues looked for porters and ponies to take us and our equipment uphill to the temple,” Phuntso says. “Meanwhile, I was waiting by the roadside, donning a bamboo hat I usually wore while working under the sun. After seeing my bamboo hat, an old man walked towards me and sang a ballad about my bamboo hat in Dzongkha, the national language. I was so overjoyed and impressed, so I asked him to chant more beautiful ballads.

“The idea later dawned on me that the text may have been endangered because of the weather, but when this old man dies, everything that he chanted for me most likely would die with him. That’s when I realised we must do something very quickly to hoard the folk songs, stories, ballads, poems, tongue twisters, culinary recipes, animal husbandry knowledge, botanical knowledge, clothing practices—everything passed down orally... In addition, cultural values like the belief in the interconnectedness of living things, compassion, and more resonate with other cultures that must be preserved.”

In addition to the Loden Foundation, Karma Phuntsho founded the Shejun Agency for Bhutan’s Cultural Documentation and Research, which is now part of the foundation. Phuntsho shares with Tatler that his Buddhist upbringing propelled him to embark on these pursuits, as altruism and compassion were deeply ingrained in him.

In receiving the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award, he was joined by Sangay Tshering, once a beneficiary of Loden and now its president in Bhutan; their communications officer Kinley; and Anne and Gerard Tardy, who have been actively supporting Loden together with their friends from France.

In his acceptance speech for the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Phuntsho addressed the evolving narrative of Bhutan. Long idealised as the “happiest place on Earth,” the country remains in pursuit of its unique Gross National Happiness model. Recent socio-economic developments, including Bhutan’s graduation from the United Nations’ Least Developed Country category, have created new opportunities but also modern challenges.

“Mental health has become a rising challenge,” says the awardee. “Bhutan has this wealth of methods and techniques of dealing with mental health crises, and I have been devoting a large amount of my time getting into such techniques, bringing these philosophies and practises and trying to make them as universal as relevant to our current times, easy to take up through modern mediums and formats.”

Phuntsho asserts that Bhutan’s leaders, including Their Majesties, are doing their best to address this issue among today’s youth. “Not only did we create pioneers and role models in the business world, we have had individuals who took up business while being socially responsible, ethical, environment-friendly, and culturally sensitive. Through them, the message of sustainable, holistic development that our goal of Gross National Happiness encapsulates has reached many people,” Phuntsho shares.

Despite the challenges posed by globalisation and modernisation, Phuntsho remains optimistic about Bhutan’s cultural resilience. “Bhutan is the melting pot of two great Asian civilisations. Here we have this richness, cultural depth and complexity brought by these two civilisations,” he says. “There has never been any time when this cultural integrity was intercepted. We were never colonised, had big social upheavals, or had significant natural calamities. So Bhutan enjoys a remarkable continuity in terms of our past. That also gives most Bhutanese a strong sense of cultural roots. These have helped Bhutan remain culturally intact, and despite the challenges of the last 60 years, we hope we can maintain that continuity.” 

This article is part of Business of Good, the series that explores how global leaders work to drive change through philanthropy and positive action.

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