Yojay From Abroad: Offering From Afar

In April 2026, about 160 Bhutanese who live in Australia flew home to spend five days clearing land in Gelephu. They were not paid. They came for zhabtog — voluntary service offered for the common good — and for the chance to take part, with their own hands, in something the country was building together.

That trip says a good deal about the Bhutanese who live abroad. They left, but they did not leave home behind.

One in ten

The government’s own count puts more than 71,000 Bhutanese living and working abroad; a reconciliation across 112 countries puts the figure nearer 77,000 — close to one citizen in ten. Australia holds the largest community by far. Most are young. Why they went, and what their going means at home, is the subject of The Missing Generation.

Leaving changes what a devotional life looks like. At home, faith is woven into place: the lhakhang in the valley, the rituals for a birth or a death, the lama a family has known for generations. Far from home, those threads run through relatives. A son in Perth asks his mother in Trashigang to request the prayers. A daughter in Calgary sends money home for a family ritual she cannot attend.

Offerings that stay at home

Bhutan’s law has long kept religious offerings within the country’s own institutions. The Land Act of 1979 said so plainly. Anyone could offer land to a lhakhang, a dratshang or the monk body within the country; anything offered to a religious body outside Bhutan was to be returned, with a fine of double its value. The sacred economy of the country was kept at home.

The revived yojay keeps that principle and makes it easier to meet from abroad. The offering still goes to Bhutan’s own monastic body, the Zhung Dratshang. What has changed is that the giver no longer has to be in Bhutan to make it.

What the channel offers

As Kuensel described it in August 2026, a secure, multilingual digital channel now lets devotees anywhere in the world:

• support specific rituals,
• request prayers and spiritual services,
• receive an official acknowledgement of what they have offered, and
• keep a record of their offerings over time.

For a Bhutanese abroad, each of those answers a real need. Prayers can be requested directly rather than through a relative. The acknowledgement confirms that the offering was received and recorded. The record means a family’s giving — once written, if at all, in a lhakhang’s ledger — travels with them.

The Zhung Dratshang keeps spiritual authority over what is offered; its investment arm, Gerab Nyed-Yon, handles the financial management and audit. How that structure works, and why it matters most to those giving from far away, is told in Yojay Today and Yojay and Trust.

The diaspora is already giving

The evidence that Bhutanese abroad want to take part is not hypothetical. It is on the public record from the past two years.

• Volunteering. Besides the 160 who flew from Australia for the April volunteer programme, members of the diaspora are among the close to 40,000 people expected in Gelephu on 1 November to raise the 108 chortens of Project 108.
• Sponsoring. Bhutanese living abroad are among the sponsors of Project 108’s chortens. When the crowdfunding closed in August it had drawn offerings from 7,866 people, including Bhutanese abroad and international supporters, totalling Nu 28.37 million and USD 84,651. When the domestic drive closed in August, offerings from abroad remained open.
• Investing. In December 2024, His Majesty’s National Day address reported that Bhutanese abroad — particularly in Australia, the United States and Canada — had pledged nearly USD 140 million towards the Gelephu airport. It was offered through a ten-year fixed-term deposit for Bhutanese abroad — the first step in financing the airport, before the domestic bond of May 2025.

Investment, service and offering are different acts. Together they describe a community that has kept looking home. What that looks like for families spread across faiths and passports is told in Yojay in a Changing World.

What it means on both sides

For the Zhung Dratshang, the diaspora is a source of support that does not depend on land or on who happens to live in the valley — offerings from a generation that earns in dollars and still cares about the rituals of home.

For the giver, it is something harder to measure. In the Buddhist understanding the benefit of an offering flows to the one who makes it. A Bhutanese nurse in Melbourne who supports a ritual in Punakha is not only helping the monks. She is taking her place, by her own choice, in the collective merit of the community she came from — the same place her grandparents took when they carried butter to the dzong or gave a field so that prayers would be said.

The distance is new. The offering is not.