Brian Berletic – What if school not only taught you the basics like reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also how to build a community from the ground up? With these skills, you could specialize in any field from the humanities to science and technology, and apply them directly to improving your community and your country. That is precisely the concept driving Sisaengtham School (Facebook here), also known as the “Solar School.”

Sisaengtham School is open for high school-level students and was founded in 2010, focusing on self-sufficiency, the environment, and the principles and philosophy of Buddhism. Its founder, Prakruwimolpanyakhun (Monk-Teacher Wimolpanyakhun) also known as “the Solar Monk,” looked for the best way he could make an impact on both his community and his nation and decided founding a school would be the solution.

A good community starts with good people, and that is what Prakruwimolpanyakhun’s Sisaengtham School sets out to create. So dedicated to this goal, Prakruwimolpanyakhun sold his own home to raise money to build the school.

The school is situated near the temple he is the abbot of, located in the forest of Thailand’s northeastern Ubon Ratchathani province.

The first task the school set about accomplishing was improving literacy. Prakruwimolpanyakhun believed that no progress at all could be made in other areas if something as simple as reading and writing was still a challenge.

Solar Power, Organic Agriculture

From basic literacy the school has evolved to teach other essential skills often overlooked by more traditional education systems. For example, the concept of self-sufficiency has become central, in part because of practical necessities, and in part because of Thailand’s national policy of promoting local and national self-sufficiency and sustainability, ceaselessly advocated by Thailand’s head of state, King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

Organic produce grown at the school both feeds students and
raises extra income for the school. It also teaches students
the fundamental skills required to feed a community.

Like cells in a healthy body, self-sufficient and sustainable communities add up to a self-sufficient and sustainable country. Being able to grow your own food, produce your own power and clean drinking water, and having mastery over the basic skills necessary to build and improve one’s own community short circuits many of the imbalances and “bubbles” often seen and bred by our over-dependence on equally over-globalized markets, governments, and economies.

The school itself, therefore, focuses on teaching these basic skills. And it does not do so theoretically, but practically and quite literally hands-on.

Some of the solar arrays on the roof of the school’s main building, which
have eliminated the school’s dependency on traditional power sources.

The school depends on solar power for electricity, the food students eat is grown there at the school by the students, and income for the school since tuition is free, comes from projects students work on using their newly acquired skills. Through these projects students also end up earning extra income before their studies are even complete.

The Solar Monk

So why is Prakruwimolpanyakhun known as the “Solar Monk?” Unlike in a typical school where electricity is usually taken for granted as a common utility, and at best a passing theoretical subject in science class, the school’s dependency on solar power and the need to maintain the entire system on site, gives students an opportunity to understand, observe, and directly work with the entire system.

What began as a single broken solar system that was repaired and used to demonstrate charging mobile phone batteries and lighting a lamp, expanded into a school “renewable energy club,” and eventually into the solar grid that now fully powers the school, dropping monthly cost from 170 USD to 1 USD a month (a fee paid to keep the meter still hooked up to the national grid).

The Solar Monk and his Solar School eventually gained media attention in Thailand when he and his students won a national renewable energy competition. From a classroom demonstration, to a power system lighting the school, the Solar Monk and his students have gone on to “electrify” the surrounding community as well.

They have developed a mobile charging system for use with agricultural water pumps, essential for Thailand’s rice farmers to flood and drain rice paddies throughout the growing season, and have helped power local homes as well.

Fix Your Community, Fix The Country, Fix the World…

It may seem like a tired cliche: to change the world, change yourself first. But the Solar Monk and his students have proven this to be very true. After transforming the school and their community, they have decided to share their knowledge with others, both in their province and around the country.  Continue reading . . .

SF Source Natural Blaze Feb 2016

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