Ban Song
Community & School Restoration Program
overview
In 2007, Palacio Belmonte Culture Club and DaST created a project related to Health and education by studying, and proposing to the community a sustainable plan for the restoration of the Ban Song school in Thailand. The Team did implement a collective brainstorm with the professors, the parents and the students, some of them proposed to realize the plan, which they did, the money we did invest as seed money was very little compared to the result achieved, the pleasure of the students and professors )and the pride of the community that suddenly understood that they did not have to wait for the State to do things.
The end of that story was quite pathetic. Once the State heard about what the people had achieved by themselves, they decided to build the new school they had promised so many times and turned down the old school.
As you can see any action, even coming from the heart, might be misunderstood and provoke disorder.
But here is another interesting fact: The new school was built of concrete with air conditioning. The old one was made of wood (as most of the houses in the countryside), perfectly safe, of traditional built, naturally ventilated with walls off lowers climbing on bamboo fences 6 meters high.
Easy and very cheap to maintain by the community itself.
Most of the time we were the ones, who were learning a lot from the natives.
What we learned in developing those actions is that very little, in term of money is needed if we want to live harmoniously, a lot more is needed in term of time.
But, above all, loyalty and common sense.
