**Guests - A Concept of Educational & Entrepreneurial Excellence by Prof. em. Dr. Jürgen Zimmer** The role of guests has already been outlined in section 8.4. Not all, but a certain number of guests contribute to the important experience of receiving guests. This experience is reminiscent of one of the famous sentences attributed to Martin Luther: "If the world would end tomorrow, I still want to pay my debts today and plant an apple tree." In the early days of the School for Life in Chiang Mai, Jim – a member of the U.S. Navy – appeared, sad-faced because his Japanese girlfriend had run away from him. On a walk through one of the Akha villages, he saw a little boy with a bloated belly and in bad shape. It had recently become known that the boy suffered from Hirschsprung's disease, a terminal illness: a part of the bowel was no longer working and would lead to a process of self-poisoning if no operation was performed. Jim offered to lead a "rescue team" and take the child to the hospital, where Jim would finance the operation. The real difficulty was not in the operation, complicated enough though that is, but rather to overcome the bureaucracy involved due to the fact that the child had neither Thai citizenship nor could show any other identification documents such as a birth certificate. In the end though, the child was rescued, and Jim forgot his grief over the lost girlfriend. The manager of a chocolate factory from Switzerland outed himself as a compost specialist who, along with the children, set to work on the difficult task of composting teak leaves. A young theatre director from Bavaria who had studied "Cats" in her native village, put on parts of the musical with the children. A retired English teacher fascinated the children with a dramatic and theatrical English lesson. A dentist and his wife carry out screenings with the children and want to come back next year. Guests who plant apple trees and come back to see whether they have grown are very welcome in a School for Life. Last and not least, they also help the School for Life to be able to generate revenue of an increasingly significant scale – on the road to a "self-sufficiency economy", as favored by Thailand's King. Culture sensitive tourism and the School for Life are not at odds with one another, but rather form a synergy. ## [Concept](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/196/concept) Chapters - **[1. Little History School for Life Chiang Mai](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/210/1-little-history-school-for-life-chiang-mai)** - **[2. At First Sight](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/209/2-at-first-sight)** - **[3. Characteristics](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/208/3-characteristics)** - **[4. The Family Concept](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/207/4-the-family-concept)** - **[5. Kindergarten](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/206/5-kindergarten)** - **[6. Schooling and Deschooling](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/205/6-schooling-and-deschooling)** - **[7. Learning Through Life](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/204/7-learning-through-life)** - **[8. The Seven Centers of Excellence](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/203/8-the-seven-centers-of-excellence)** - **[9. Think Tank and Master Workshops](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/202/9-think-tank-and-master-workshops)** - **[10. The Setting](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/201/10-the-setting)** - **[11. Teachers](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/200/11-teachers)** - **[12. Guests](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/199/12-guests)** - **[13. Partners](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/198/13-partners)** - **[14. Transfer of innovation](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/197/14-transfer-of-innovation)** - **[15 ](https://phuketer.com/s/00000600/wiki/196/concept#15.-attachments)[Source PDF (external site)](https://school-for-life.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/SfL-Konzept-2003-2016_fin-1.pdf)** School for Life, 185/3 Moo 4, T. Pameing, Doi Saket District, 50220 Chiang Mai, Thailand Tel. +66 53 248194