Solar Power and Regenerative Agriculture in Burma

Lights. Energy. Heat. Hot water. Cooked food. Clean water. Critical thinking. Preventive maintenance. Knowledge sharing. Experimentation. Community advancement. Sustainability. These are just some of the resulting benefits of the trainings that Solar Roots provides to the communities within Burma, focusing on community sustainability.

Enthusiastic to learn, the 20 participants (monks, monastic teachers, and a few local residents) joined together for a 10 day training with Solar Roots on clay oven building and Photovoltaic solar panel training at a monastery in Taunggyi, the capital of the Shan State. Bruce, the founder of Solar Roots, highlighted that the enthusiasm in Myanmar to learn is incredibly inspiring. Koh So, an environmental activist and local resident of Taunggyi, really exemplified the motivation within the community to not only learn and experiment, but to also share that knowledge with others too! He really took a lead in building and experimenting with both the clay oven and the solar energy trainings. Koh So also supported Bruce by translating for the others and building connections to what Bruce taught so that everyone understood well and was involved. It's uplifting to see how involved they were! 

The participants learned to build a rocket stove, which is essentially an L-shaped oven with a chimney where wood is fed in from the bottom of the wood. The stove that Bruce introduced burns wood more efficiently, produces less smoke, and creates a very strong amount of heat. All of the materials used were locally sourced (from the earth and from local product stores). 

Bruce focuses on teaching installation, preventive maintenance, and repairs. Preventive maintenance is sometimes a difficult concept to grasp in a culture that generally fixes things only when they break. To understand this, it's important to know that the education system in Myanmar is very restrictive. Freedom of thought and critical thinking are not taught. Instead, students in Myanmar are required to memorize throughout their education years, which in turn does not teach preventative monitoring. This is a reality that will change with continued opportunities such as Solar Roots' trainings, giving these eager learners practical, hands-on experience to implement the ideas they are taught and to continue sharing the knowledge to build sustainability within their communities. 

The training was a tremendous success, and Bruce looks forward to regular updates from the monks and the community members who participated to see how they're sharing and implementing the knowledge they gained! Though the challenges within Myanmar are plenty, Solar Roots is commited to helping to empower the communities that it reaches to know that there are alternatives and to provide the tools to implement and teach those applications.