Sonam Wangchuk

Founder

Founder of Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL)

Sonam Wangchuk is the founder of Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL)[1], an Indian non-profit working on education from Leh.

Sonam Wangchuk (born 1966) is an Indian engineer, educator and environmental activist from Ladakh. He co-founded the Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) in 1988 and designed its solar-heated campus at Phey, near Leh, which runs without fossil fuel for heating.

He is best known outside Ladakh for the Ice Stupa, a method of storing winter meltwater as cone-shaped ice towers that release water for irrigation in spring, and for the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL), an alternative university he co-founded in 2017.

Early life and education

Wangchuk was born in 1966 in Uleytokpo in Leh district. He was taught at home by his mother until the age of nine, and then attended school in Srinagar after his father entered government. He has described leaving for Delhi alone at the age of twelve to seek admission to a Kendriya Vidyalaya after struggling with schooling conducted in languages he did not speak.

He took a B.Tech in mechanical engineering at the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, in 1987, and in 2011 completed a diploma in earthen architecture at CRAterre in France.

Career

SECMOL was founded in 1988 by Wangchuk, his brother and a group of fellow students, in response to the very high failure rates of Ladakhi pupils in government school examinations. In 1994 SECMOL launched Operation New Hope, a collaboration with the government and village communities to reform state schools in Ladakh, including the introduction of teaching in Ladakhi in the early years.

Wangchuk designed the SECMOL campus at Phey, which is powered by solar energy and heated passively. In 2013 he developed the Ice Stupa, an artificial glacier formed by piping stream water and releasing it as a fountain in winter so that it freezes into a conical tower; the shape minimises the surface exposed to the sun so that the ice lasts into the spring sowing season, when Ladakhi villages face acute water shortage.

In 2017 he co-founded the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL) with Gitanjali J. Angmo, an institution intended to offer higher and vocational education rooted in mountain contexts.

Recognition

Wangchuk received the Governor's Medal for educational reform in Jammu and Kashmir in 1996, was named Man of the Year by The Week in 2001, and received the Green Teacher Award in 2004 and a Real Heroes Award in 2008.

In 2016 he received the Fred M. Packard Award of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and a Rolex Award for Enterprise for the Ice Stupa project. He received the Global Award for Sustainable Architecture in 2017 and the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2018.[2][3][4]

Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL)

Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL), based in Leh, is an alternative-education institute working with youth from Himalayan regions on practical, hands-on learning in engineering, ecology and culture aimed at tackling mountain-community challenges.

Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL) reports the following, on its own site: