Himalayan Innovator and Educator – Sonam Wangchuk
The barren and desolate landscapes of Ladakh, surrounded by white Himalayan peaks and clear blue skies, captivate with their harsh, primordial beauty. However, life in these cold wastelands in the far northwest of India, where Tibetan, Indian, and Central Asian influences intertwine, has always been difficult. This is a desert at an altitude of about 3500 meters which receives less than 100 liters of precipitation per square meter annually. “People can only survive here thanks to glaciers,” says Sonam Wangchuk, an innovator and a synonym for revolutionary change in education and sustainability in Ladakh, who believes that education and environmental care go hand in hand.
Although engineering was his first love, educational reform overshadowed it – it was an insatiable calling. At an age when most young people dream of a career, Wangchuk concluded that it is important to contribute “where it is needed, rather than focus on what he personally needs.”
Officially, E The educational system, which he himself experienced, Wangchuk describes as “sixteen years of imprisonment through listening”. His most memorable pre-school years in a remote village with only four households were filled with learning the knowledge that many present generations only learn from textbook pages. He started school at the age of nine, but not in his native language, but in the language of Urdu that he did not understand. He claims that the formal school program actually hindered the realization of his true potential. It was only in high school that his encounter with optics fascinated him so much and encouraged him to enroll in mechanical engineering studies, despite his father’s strong opposition due to the lack of job opportunities.
In order to continue his education, during summer and winter breaks, he provided math tutoring and once again faced the critical state of the school system and the unsuitability of the curriculum in the context of Ladakh. Namely, the school books, organized in Delhi, were tailored to tropical India, which was not suitable for the children of Ladakh. In the Himalayan mountains, everything was distant and unfamiliar. A much bigger, almost insurmountable problem was that the majority of the local population spoke Ladakhi, a dialect of the Tibetan language, while the first eight grades were taught in Urdu, the official language of the Indian state of Kashmir, along with its script, and then continued in English, the official language of India! As a result, 90-95% of the children were failing the final exams at the end of the tenth grade.
When he finished college, Wangchuk decided to tackle this problem, so in 1988, he founded the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) with a group of like-minded youth. In collaboration with the government and local community, they undertook a thorough reform of the school system. Over the course of several years, textbooks were linguistically and culturally adapted for elementary school students in Ladakh, and teachers received the necessary education, which almost unbelievably reduced the school failure rate because the percentage of students who did not pass exams decreased significantly. The high school graduation was revived dramatically, falling from absurd 95% to 25%. As a temporary solution, while the variant of the Tibetan script used to write Ladakhi is not standardized and textbooks are not prepared, Urdu has been replaced by the English language. The results, although encouraging, did not satisfy him, so he started an alternative school for students, mostly sixteen-year-olds, who were rejected by regular schools due to repeated failures. SECMOL established a campus for students from remote villages for the purpose of preparing for the graduation exam and integrating into the official school system, as well as learning practical traditional knowledge and skills for easier employment.
The campus is located in the village of Phey, 13 kilometers away from the Ladakhi capital of Leh, and was inaugurated by the Dalai Lama himself in 1998. The buildings are constructed using a traditional earth-packed technique that retains heat, even in extremely harsh winter conditions, for which SECMOL, led by Wangchuk, received the International Te in 2016. Wangchuk, an innovative engineer, was awarded the Terra Award at the 12th World Congress of Earth Architecture in Lyon, France. Over the past three decades, Wangchuk has been encouraging innovation among young people, with a focus on the development and implementation of alternative energy sources. Since Ladakh experiences over three hundred sunny days per year, the sun is the main source of energy and an alternative to fossil fuels. The entire campus is electrified using solar energy, which is also used for cooking, water heating, and other purposes. The self-sustainable campus is home to around 70 students, along with a dozen staff members and a few volunteers. The students take turns performing various tasks, such as milking cows, cultivating vegetables in the school greenhouse, preparing meals, taking care of solar panels for heating, cooking, and lighting, and maintaining composting toilets, among other things. Classes are conducted alongside these responsibilities and free time. There are also extracurricular activities such as traditional songs and dances, a debating club, volleyball, football, and ice skating in the winter. proučavao je metode izrade umjetnog leda i osmislio je ledene stupe kako bi pomogao lokalnom stanovništvu koje je ovisno o snijegu za poljoprivredu i vodu. Ove stupe se grade od drenežnih cijevi koje se postavljaju na brdima i povezuju sa izvorom vode. Noću se cijevi zalijevaju, a voda se smrzava formirajući stupu koja će se koristiti tijekom dana za navodnjavanje polja.
Ova inovativna tehnologija omogućuje lokalnom stanovništvu da proizvodi hranu tijekom cijele godine i rješava problem nestašice vode tijekom sušnih razdoblja. Također je ekonomična jer je jeftinija od tradicionalnih metoda navodnjavanja.
Osim toga, SECMOL je razvio i sustave za proizvodnju solarnih toplinskih kolektora koji se koriste za grijanje vode, kao i sustave za proizvodnju električne energije iz solarnih panela.
Njihova predanost održivosti i inovacijama učinila je SECMOL prepoznatljivom institucijom, a Wangchuk je postao inspiracija mnogima širom svijeta koji žele pronaći održiva rješenja za svoje zajednice. continues to lead SECMOL with immense enthusiasm, under the motto Clear mind – skillful hands – kind heart.
ICICLE STUPES
Himalayan glaciers, like vast reservoirs of fresh water for this region, are essential for life. However, every spring, the people of Ladakh face an acute water shortage when it is most needed – for the start of planting and sowing. Throughout history, various methods have been tried to overcome this age-old problem. The latest innovative solution by Sonam Wangchuk is the freezing of water from mountain streams into tall conical mounds that slowly melt throughout the year and provide water in the dry season. Surface exposures to the Sun slowly release water, serving for irrigation until mid-June when water starts coming from the melting of natural glaciers.
Wangchuk says that the idea of an artificial glacier crystallized for him when he crossed a bridge: “I saw that ice was retained under the bridge at 3000 m, which is the warmest and lowest altitude in the entire area, and that was in May, so I concluded – ice melts due to direct sunlight, but if we protect it from the Sun, we can have a glacier here too.” Thus, in 2013, he started working with students from SECMOL on a prototype of an artificial glacier near the village. The prototype from 2013/2014 was made with funds collected through an internet campaign, thanks to which a 2.3 km pipeline was installed. This pillar served for planting 5000 poplar tree saplings by its melting.
The project of building ice stupas was successfully continued, and in 2016, the Rolex Foundation, which awards individual prizes every other year, recognized The innovator with ideas that make the world a better place to live was awarded a prize of 100,000 Swiss francs for further development and implementation of that concept.
The concept of ice stupas is based on a simple idea: water from mountain streams is piped near the village during winter. The water is then directed vertically and sprayed, causing it to freeze before touching the ground at temperatures ranging from -20°C to -50°C. Over a few weeks, an icy mound forms, resembling the Buddhist stupas.