Sonam Wangchuk (Engineer)
| Sonam Wangchuk | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
1 September 1966 UleyTokpo near Alchi, India |
| Nationality |
 Indian
|
| Alma mater |
National Institute of Technology, Srinagar Craterre |
| Organization | Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh |
| Known for | Ice Stupa, SECMOL, Ladags Melong, Operation New Hope |
| Political party | New Ladakh Movement (NLM) |
| Parent(s) |
|
| Awards |
Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2017) Rolex Awards for Enterprise (2016) Real Heroes Award (2008) Ashoka Fellowship for Social Entrepreneurship (2002) |
Sonam Wangchuk (born 1 September 1966) is an engineer, innovator and education reformist. He is the founding-director of the Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) which was founded in 1988 by a group of students who had been in his own words, the ‘victims’ of an alien education system foisted on Ladakh. He is also known for designing the SECMOL campus that runs on solar energy and uses no fossil fuels for cooking, lighting or heating.
Wangchuk was instrumental in the launch of Operation New Hope in 1994, a collaboration of government, village communities and the civil society to bring reforms in the government school system. He invented the Ice Stupa technique that creates artificial glaciers, used for storing winter water in form of conical shaped ice heap.
Wangchuk was born in 1966 in Uleytokpo, near Alchi in the Leh district of Jammu and Kashmir. He was not enrolled in a school until the age of 9 year as there weren’t any schools in his village. His mother taught him all the basics in his own mother tongue till that age.
Wangchuk considers himself lucky to have been spared the pains of schooling in alien languages which other Ladakhi children were forced to. His father Sonam Wangyal, a politician who later became the minister in state government, was stationed in Srinagar. At age 9, he was taken to Srinagar and enrolled in a school there. Since he looked different compared to the other students, he would get addressed in a language that he did not understand. Due to which his lack of responsiveness was mistaken for him being stupid. He recalls this period as the darkest part of his life. Unable to bear the treatment, in 1977 he escaped alone to Delhi where he pleaded his case to the school principal at Vishesh Kendriya Vidyala.
Wangchuk completed his B.Tech in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology (then REC), Srinagar in 1987. Due to differences with his father over the choice of engineering stream, he had to finance his own education. He also went for two years of higher studies in Earthen Architecture at Craterre School of Architecture in Grenoble, France in 2011.
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