The Loden Foundation was founded on 24 May 1999 by the Bhutanese scholar Lopen Karma Phuntsho who came to study as a graduate student at Balliol College in 1997.
Meanwhile, Karma's former school headmistress and acclaimed Bhutanese writer Kunzang Choden[1] who was living in central Bhutan, joined him to identify children in need and distribute funds.
It is one of the names of the Buddha of Wisdom, of Padmasambhava, who brought Buddhism to the Himalayan region and a term for Bodhisattva, an altruistic being who seeks enlightenment for the whole world.
The Loden motto is ཆོས་བདག་མེད་ཀུན་ལ་ཐོབ་ཐང་ཡོད། (chos bdag med kun la thob thang yod), a Buddhist proverb that knowledge/truth is without an owner and everyone is entitled to it.
Today, Loden Education Initiatives has supported over 202 children through its child sponsorship, programme, and 58 youth to undergo undergraduate courses within and outside Bhutan.
Since its inception, the program has recorded 3,267 hours of oral history, digitized approximately 4.5 million pages of written heritage, and documented over 150,000 artifacts.