Ban Song

In 2007, the Palácio Belmonte Culture Club and Frederic Coustols launched a project dedicated to health and education by studying, and then proposing to the local community, a sustainable plan for the restoration of the Ban Song school in Thailand. The team facilitated a collective brainstorming process with teachers, parents and students, many of whom volunteered to carry out the plan themselves. They succeeded, and the small amount invested as seed funding proved insignificant when compared to the extraordinary results achieved, the joy of the students and teachers, and the pride of a community that suddenly realised it did not need to wait for the State to take action.

The conclusion of this story, however, was unexpectedly disheartening. Once the authorities learned what the community had managed to accomplish on its own, they decided to build the new school they had repeatedly promised in the past, and proceeded to demolish the old one.

This experience offered an important lesson, revealing how even the most generous initiatives can be misinterpreted and inadvertently create disruption.

Yet it also highlighted something essential. The newly built school was made of concrete and equipped with air conditioning. The old school, like most countryside homes, had been constructed from wood using traditional methods, naturally ventilated and surrounded by six metre high bamboo fences covered in flowering plants. It was easy and inexpensive for the community to maintain. In many ways, it was perfectly suited to its environment.

Throughout this process, we often found ourselves learning far more from local residents than we could ever teach. What these experiences ultimately showed us is that financial resources are rarely the determining factor in living harmoniously. What is truly required is time, loyalty and common sense.