Buddha-Kasetra(18) is a group of Buddhist base communities in northern Thailand organized under common leadership. It has established a number of schools to care for orphans, juvenile delinquents, and economically deprived children in the north and northeast of Thailand. Its goal is to build strong Buddhist base communities in rural Thailand to fight poverty, consumerism, and the structural exploitation created by a centralized bureaucratic government.(19)
The first Buddha-Kasetra school, established at Maelamong in the northern province of Maehongsorn, began its self-support program by growing their own rice and vegetables, producing organic fertilizers, and raising cows to produce milk for the school children as well as to supply milk at a cheap price to the local communities. They also initiated some small commercial projects to produce traditional foods and desserts, weave and sew clothes, and make bricks and concrete posts for construction. All the teachers and school children, in addition to school work, participated in occupational training and manual labor. There was a project to establish a public health center within the community to care for the health of the local people. The Buddha-Kasetra school was able to be self-sufficient in most aspects of its work. Three more Buddha-Kasetra schools were established -- at Nongho in Chiangmai, at Khunyuam in Maehongsorn, and at Nonmuang in Korat. The number of school children and teachers keeps growing.
The Buddha-Kasetra is especially interested in the issue of the exploitation of women and children. It has campaigned to protect women's and children's rights and to alert people to the problems of prostitution and child abuse in northern Thailand. At the Buddha-Kasetra school at Nongho, girls and young women from poor, marginal family backgrounds are admitted to the school for education and occupational training, as well as instruction in Buddhist ethics. There are six teachers, all female except for the principal, Phasakorn Kandej, and eighty-six female students ranging in age from thirteen to eighteen. If these students were not admitted to the school, it is likely that most of them would have resorted to prostitution.
The Buddha-Kasetra Foundation was founded in Chiangmai in 1989, with Phra Chaiyot as coordinator of all its schools and activities. The foundation, which has its own printing press, publishes a monthly newspaper, as well as a number of books on Buddhism and social issues. The foundation has been trying to alleviate the causes of social ills by working with the poor and the unfortunate in a Buddhist base community context, and by training young men and women to be leaders of their own communities in rural Thailand. Although the number is still limited, base communities like Buddha-Kasetra are important in their own right and serve as examples of a new vision of a more humane, cooperative, and service-oriented way of life.