Happiness and Wellbeing Center
Background
The Happiness and Wellbeing Centres was established in 2019 to address the emerging wellbeing, academic and career challenges at RUB colleges. The centre is supporting Paro college in fulfilling the overall vision to become ‘An internationally recognized university steeped in GNH values’. The centre was established with financial assistance from the European Union, Erasmus Plus Programme through a project developed and coordinated by Paro College of Education in partnership with three Universities from European Union: VUB, Brussels, ISMAI, Portugal, and UoB, UK.
The Happiness and Wellbeing Centre is serving as a safe place for the students of the Paro College to seek refuge, and it provides opportunities for the interested students to build skills, enhance insight, and grow resilience, which will all go a long way in preparing them for life. The happiness and wellbeing centre lead in counselling & wellbeing education, training, and research programmes. The centre also cater services related with happiness, wellbeing, and counselling to PCE staff, local community, government agencies, and Non Governmental Organizations. Some of the services that the centre caters are mindfulness, one-to-one counselling, group counselling, courses on insight, and skill enhancement. The centre also initiate tailor made group courses on need-based themes such as ‘Being Bhutanese’ ‘Leadership of Self’ & ‘Working with life challenges’ etc. The centre is manned by three trained professionals under the office of Dean of Student Affairs.
The physical space of the centre is divided into six main corners. The students can use the lounge outside for group discussions, and coffee moments to surf the net or charge their gadgets, the inner space is divided into three sections: 1) the mini stage that can be used to enhance their communication, or presentation or social skills 2) the carpeted floor with fifteen mats is used for regular mindfulness sessions 3) the sitting arrangement next to the book cardboard is used as a mini library and educational screen viewing. The students use the separate room fitting with six computers and a heavy duty printer for academic and career related activities. Finally, the room deep inside the centre is used for one to one counselling sessions.
