The Bhutanese Leading the way.
Royal Bhutan Police (RBP) has started a new program called Little Police Partnership (LPP) to celebrate the birth of His Royal Highness the Gyalsey, with a theme to promote child friendly policing with primary school level children in Thimphu. It will be launched by the Education Minister at Kuensel Phodrang School, on Saturday.
According to RBP, school-going students below the age of 12 will be involved in LPP program. LPP aims to foster positive relationship between the police and children. LPP will also equip young children with the necessary skills to avoid dangerous situations and to develop importance of the crime prevention amongst children.
The program also aims to create, in young children, a positive understanding of the police role in the society, and to build trust and confidence towards the police and to prevent children from coming in conflict with the law.
LPP will be set up as a pilot project in Thimphu and will be initiated, after requesting the TEO/DEO, at the convenience of school authority. If successful, the same model will be introduced in other schools out of Thimphu, depending upon budget availability, and the program will be conducted during school session for a maximum of three hours.
RBP will be providing different activities to the children to discern information from the environment that is significant to them and to foster positive perception about police. The first activity that they will provide to the student is to create awareness amongst children on help line (113,111,110).
The second is to create awareness on road safety. They will learn good road safety habits at an early age to become responsible and safe adults through classroom and practical activities.
Thirdly, the children will be made to interact with the various police officials, such as traffic and fire officials. RBP hopes to erase any fear of the image that police bears, and to build confidence towards police and to introduce positive routine police code of conduct.
LPP will also introduce students to the firefighter and gain basics knowledge of fire safety. It will demonstrate safety measure to be followed in case of fire incidents, and there will be demonstrations on firefighting tools and fire engines. Children will also be introduced to the members of K9 Unit (police dogs).
In order to provide familiarization tour to police stations and CPC, the children will be taken for a ride on different police vehicles. They will also meet “Uncle Police or Aazha Gagpa”, a friendly police mascot.
However, after doing so, RBP expects some behavioral changes in children enrolled in LPP, such as increased self-esteem and skills to resist engaging in crime or anti social behaviours, and to partake in various engagement programs, such as Police Youth Partnership Program (PYPP) and Friends of Police (FOP) in the near future.
