Environment & Poverty Times


06 2009


Building resilience


A typical day at the solar workshop. Stewart Allen.


The Barefoot College approach By Stewart Allen


Rebecca Banda, 45, of Kaphuka village in Uganda is a mother of five, and completely illiterate. Yet not only can she fabricate and assemble circuit boards for solar lanterns and charge-controllers, she can also test, maintain and install these systems in house- holds throughout her village.


Rebecca is just one of 34 illiterate and semi- literate women from seven different coun- tries in Africa who have recently completed their training at the Barefoot College. She has now returned to her village, and will in turn help solar electrify over 200 house- holds and set up a rural electronic workshop for the maintenance of the systems and the further instruction of other villagers. The


village has already agreed in writing how much she will be paid per month after she has installed fixed solar units with a solar lantern in each house. In this way, her skills will be passed on to a new generation of villagers, giving them much needed confi- dence and self-esteem and helping them to break out of the poverty trap.


Rebecca was one of the ‘students’ of the Barefoot College, which was established in 1971 in Tilonia, Rajasthan, India by noted so- cial activist Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy. The college believes that community development lies in the hands of the people themselves and has pioneered an approach – known as the Barefoot approach – to solar electrification in 16 states of India and 19 other developing countries worldwide.


The college is the only college built by the poor for the poor, and is also the only fully solar-powered college in India – 45 kilo- watts of solar panels provide power to run 30 computers, 500 tube lights, 125 fans, photocopying machines, an internet café, a pathology lab, a dental office, film editing equipment, cameras and slide projectors. The objective of the college is to identify and recognize traditional knowledge, village skills, and the practical wisdom of the poor and apply them for their own development. The college believes that illiteracy is not a barrier to acquiring skills and enabling the poor to develop themselves.


Solar power was first implemented on a large scale by the Barefoot College in 1986, to completely energize the 80,000 square


foot campus at Tilonia. It was then but a natural step towards extending our philoso- phy of helping the poor help themselves, by including solar power within our remit. Since 1989, the college has trained more than 300 Barefoot solar engineers in India, who have in turn electrified over 12,000 houses covering 628 remote and inacces- sible villages in 16 states of India, saving approximately 1.9 million tonnes of carbon emissions from polluting the environment through the use of diesel, kerosene, candles, torch batteries and wood. In 2005, with the help of several partners, the college started training women from developing countries abroad, predominantly countries in Africa, and also Afghanistan, Bhutan and Bolivia. So far, the college has trained over 150 for- eign Barefoot solar engineers, 119 of them


Stewart Allen.


An installation practice session for one of the BSEs. Stewart Allen.


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