Learning through work is one form of learning. Learning through working with the community is another way to understand their potential and abilities and help them bring out the potential of their existing way of life.
“ Phukram ” is a hand-dyed cotton brand from Sakon Nakhon Province that was created from studying the stories and roots of the community in her hometown by Miao – Pilanthan Thaisruang.
She is a former community historian born in a small village in Phu Phan District, Sakon Nakhon Province, who traveled to study and work in Bangkok for several years. When her heart called her to return home, Pilan used her knowledge and skills to apply to her hometown to create jobs, generate income, and develop the potential of people in the community to their fullest potential.
Today, with the cooperation of the villagers and the potential to be a change leader, Pilanthan has been able to create a small brand that is successful both as a brand and as a leader who has truly made a difference in the lives of his hometown.
Self-examination
Previously, Ms. Meow – Pilanthan Thaisruang worked as a community historian. Her duties included conducting field research in target communities to find information, stories, and backgrounds of the communities and their people.
“At that time, our work was not focused on historical research. We focused on working with the local people, which allowed us to see a lot of changes in the area. It was an integrated work about culture, about the current community, and how their way of life was. Because the word community means the whole of society, which involves many factors, such as the environment, culture, and society.” Working in such a role required her to be involved in various communities throughout the country for a long time. At one point, working closely with other communities stimulated her inner feelings to want to return to her home community.
“I had the idea of going back home since I graduated, but I happened to get a job in Bangkok first, so I stayed there. But at one point, when I was about 30 years old, I felt that I didn’t see a goal, I didn’t see a direction in life. But what I clearly felt was that I wanted to go back home, live with my parents, and work in my hometown,” said Miao Pilanthan, talking about what had happened to her in the past.
When her inner calling became stronger, she decided to quit her job and return to her hometown full-time, and began using her knowledge and experience to create change in her community.
“Before I left my job, I was also a bit scared to leave my job. But I was more brave than scared because my goal was at home. When I came back home, I thought that I could do many things. I saw opportunities to develop the community that I loved. I saw opportunities to work on the way of life, on history, and I saw opportunities to work with people,” she said about the beginning of creating the Phukram brand.
Bringing change to the community with the Phukram brand
Miao Pilanthan said that before she started the Phukram brand, she studied the history and way of life of the people in her community. When she understood it, she brought back the knowledge she already had in the community to improve the quality of life and bring life back to the people in the community once again.
“We started to explore the original values of the area, what they are good at, what their history is like, what kind of life they have. That’s the origin of our creation of the Phukram handwoven cotton brand because we found that the locals here already have the knowledge of cotton cultivation, cotton weaving, and indigo dyeing in their blood.
“Phukram makes handwoven cotton, pulling the cotton threads by hand because our concept is that we want the work to bring out their original way of life in order to preserve these things. The people here used to grow cotton, we used to weave fabric ourselves, we used to dye fabrics using natural methods like this. What we do is to bring out the potential of the area, the potential of the history, and the potential of the way of life that they already have,” the founder of the Phukram brand said about the important concept.
What’s even more interesting is that Pilanth places great importance on the local people. They are the heart of her work, so she gives them the opportunity to express their opinions and fully demonstrate their abilities, believing that their spirit will clearly reflect the local identity in her work.
“We want the locals to preserve their local knowledge. We want the locals to preserve their environment because Phu Kram works in our small village. We feel that if we don’t take care of this place, who will? We started with our homes. The flower and tree patterns that we embroidered on the cloth are a reflection of the people in the community. We want them to reflect this beauty by letting the villagers think for themselves about their flowers, homes, and way of life. The person who can best reflect this is themselves.”
Learn from working with local people
“We value the participation process of local people, both their thoughts and feelings,” Pilanthan explained how he worked with the villagers of Phu Phan. “Making the Phu Kram brand is almost 100% community-related. It’s true that it’s a personal brand, but we wanted to use our past work processes, whether it’s the concept of development or participation. We don’t want to prioritize business, but we value the participation process of local people. So we had to go back to the process of making fabric, why it had to be like this, why it had to be cotton, why there was this weaving method, and develop it into the concept of Phu Kram.”
She said that she spent years developing the products under the Phukram brand. Each step of the work was like research without any structure or plan. The findings at each step clearly helped determine the learning and later the Phukram brand.
“We gradually study, develop, and research, but it is small research that is not recorded. In each step, we gradually learn what it will be like if we do this. But the main principle that is the core from the beginning is that we want the people who work with us to be happy. We want them to have a good quality of life. We do not mean happiness that is happy or anything like that, but we want them to be happy in a simple way. Let them work in a way that fits their way of life. They will not have to struggle to work in the city or other places like we used to go.”
In the beginning of my work, “At first, I worked with a small group. This was the most tiring period because they still could not see how they would live and eat. How could we improve their lives? Because they had the option of farming. But when our work came in as something new, they were not very brave at first. But later, when they could really live and their quality of life improved, others started to follow. And they would be the ones who continued to support our work.”
However, with the work that relies on the method of learning together in the community, on the positive side is being close and being able to easily exchange knowledge with each other. However, on the other hand, working without any frameworks or rules to allow for trial and error, both Pilan and the villagers who joined the work had to learn and adjust themselves to work with each other quite a bit.
“We have to learn together, especially when working at Phu Kram, which is a job where we create hope for the villagers. So we have to work with people’s feelings, and it’s also an art. We have to work with a lot of people, and everyone comes to learn together. If we work with an office and set rules, we will be able to select people. But our format is an experiment to find out what our format should be like. So everyone has to gradually crystallize together. The advantage is that it is very flexible, but this flexibility is also difficult to manage,” Pilanthan said about the important learning process.
Ms. Meow – Pilanthan Thaisruang said that she believes in learning and sees the importance of each person’s life experiences. And because each person has different life experiences, it results in learning from different perspectives, resulting in changes for each person each day. And if she were to look back on her own life, she clearly found traces of experiences and learning that led her to this point.
The story references an interview with Khun Miao – Pilanthan Thaisruang.
From the Transformative Learning Project
Supported by the Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth)
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