The Wellbeing Society (English book)

This year Suan Nguen Mee Ma social enterprise celebrates its 15th anniversary.

The social enterprise manages a bookshop, coffee house and restaurant in the old city centre of Bangkok. At this occasion Hans van Willenswaard, co-founder, compiled a thought provoking book for Sulak Sivaraksa’s 84th birthday in 2017.

Ajarn Sulak enabled the start-up and was the first chairman of the shareholders’ community. The book describes an engaging learning journey that begins from meeting Ajarn Sulak in the Netherlands and reflects on a remarkable diversity of encounters in Thailand, SE Asia, and in Bhutan.

The book leads to the question how interactions between activists, intellectuals and practitioners from Asia and Europe, in particular around The Hague. City of Peace and Justice can play a creative role in the search for a new development paradigm, a new understanding of rights and duties regarding land and ‘the commons’, and a Wellbeing Society with organic agriculture at its heart.