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How is it that poor, illiterate, rural grandmothers have come to be those installing and managing solar power plants across India and Africa, putting "professional" engineers to shame and completely "electrifying" their villages? I found out when I read an article about the Barefoot Grandmothers about a year ago. I put that article in a folder and bookmarked it, later adding more information and articles to it with the intention of writing a proper diary. Real life has a way of trumping my best intentions so when I read this comment by gulfgal98 in MOT last week, I decided to write a summary and give you all the links if you are so inclined to read further.
I will begin with the birth of the idea and the man who brought it to life, Sanjit "Bunker" Roy who was born in 1945 in West Bengal, India into a wealthy family (the nickname, “Bunker” comes from the Bengali habit of rhyming siblings’ names). Bunker Roy said, “I had the most snobbish, exclusive education any Indian could have had the misfortune to have”.
When the Bihar famine occurred in the mid 1960's Roy traveled there out of curiosity and that trip changed the course of his life. He dedicated his life, much to the distress of his mother who refused to speak to him for two years, to improving the lives of the rural poor. It was his conscience and anger that drove him to blasting wells in rural villages and then in 1971 founding the Barefoot College in Tilonia.
“How is it possible that some people live in such penury – and we go through the best of education but don’t give anything back?” ~ Bunker Roy
The term "Barefoot College" was no accident as it is literal in that millions of the people of India live and work barefoot, and it is a symbolic respect for the knowledge that these poor possess.
Illiterate and semi-literate men, women and children from the lowest castes and from the most remote and inaccessible villages attend this college which trains them at their own pace to become "barefoot" water and solar engineers, architects, teachers, communicators, pathologists, midwives, IT workers, accountants and marketing managers. Once trained they return to their villages and communities and strive to make them less dependent on outside skills.
It seems that Roy trains only women as solar engineers. His reasoning for this is valid:
“Men are untrainable. Men are restless, men are ambitious, and men all want a certificate. Why? So they can leave the village and go to the city to get a job.”
Roy's solution to train only grandmothers, aims at benefiting the community rather than a selfish individual as grandmothers do not leave the village. They stay and pass their knowledge on to others.
At the college the women learn to assemble charge controllers and inverters, establish a rural electronic workshop, install solar panels on roofs, connect them to batteries, and solar electrify each house in her village -- all within six months!
At one of his speeches, Roy proudly told his audience:
“These women know more about practical installation, fabrication, repair and maintenance than any paper qualified certified solar engineer after five years study.”
Every bit of this is accomplished without textbooks, manuals, or a single written or spoken word! The Barefoot approach trains these women by demonstration, practice and sign language.
That is how it was done when the very first three solar grandmothers were trained. Then they, in turn, trained a further 27 woman, who spoke many different languages, from all over India. This group went out and were able to then electrify some 200 rural villages.
After that initial success, the Barefoot College brought women from 26 African countries to India for a six-month training program, again conducted entirely by demonstration and sign language.
“We had all these women sitting together, chatting away, not understanding a word of what their neighbor was saying,” recalled Roy with a broad grin.
In 2011, the President of Sierra Leone approved construction for the first Barefoot Center in Konta Line, Africa where since, some 195 African solar grandmothers had electrified 12,700 houses in 170 villages. The cost of the training and these installations was about 3.9 million dollars.
The villagers agreed to pay what they had previously been paying for kerosene torches, batteries, candles, wood and other biomass, which was around $5.00 a month, in order to pay for the solar units in their village.
Today, these illiterate, barefoot grandmothers are respected community leaders. Not a single one has left her village.
In the speech I referenced earlier, Sanjit "Bunker" Roy left his audience open-mouthed as he had just described the impossible. Bunker Roy ended the speech with one of his favorite quotes:
“You don’t have to look for solutions from outside,” he urged. “Look for solutions within and listen to people on the ground….What Mahatma Gandhi said springs to mind: ‘First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you and then you win.’”
Barefoot College
Barefoot College - Wiki
Bunker Roy - Wiki
The women bringing solar power to Sierra Leone
Bunker Roy TED video