By Jonathan Tucker
The Barefoot College is an organization based in India whose mission is to train illiterate women from the most marginalized areas in the least developed countries around the world to become solar engineers and leaders in the transformation of their rural communities towards self-reliance and self-sufficiency based on decentralized, small-scale renewable energy infrastructures. The Barefoot initiative has spread to 13 states in India, 15 countries in Africa, as well as remote villages of Bolivia, Bhutan and Afghanistan, and will soon be implemented in a total of 27 countries around the world.


Bunker Roy, founder of Barefoot College, explains that their “approach has been designed to demonstrate the first technically and financially self-sufficient solar electrified villages, and by training the illiterate rural grandmother to be a fully competent solar engineer, there is no need for an urban qualified engineer, thus eliminating the dependency of communities on the urban expert. These women have proven that they are capable of fabricating, installing and maintaining solar lighting systems after undergoing six months of hands-on training without written materials, tutored by unschooled Indian women. This model instills pride along with new skill sets, and raises the social status of women as role models within cultures that are historically oppressive towards women.”


Roy believes that the very poor have every right to have access to, control, manage and own the most sophisticated of technologies to improve their own lives. First and most important is to respect, understand and accept that very poor people all over the world have the capacity and competence to be able to utilize their traditional and experiential knowledge, supplemented by new technical skills to raise their quality of life while simultaneously reducing negative ecological impacts.
This system of implementation and management is regionally specific, yet globally replicable, and has proven to successfully transfer across diverse geographic and cultural areas. It further circumvents the exploitation of these small rural communities by massive centralized energy corporations or corrupt governments. Further, this technical knowledge can be passed between community members in a self-sustaining manner.


Barefoot College has potential to redirect developing countries’ social and energy infrastructures towards sustainability rather than following the destructive (and already failing) fossil fuel-based infrastructures of developed countries. Grassroots organizations like Barefoot College represent a new hope for environmental and social justice.

Learn more about Barefoot College on their website:
http://www.barefootcollege.org/
Or watch these videos:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week1203/cover.html

About The Author: Jonathan Tucker