When Chennamma and Yelamma “enrolled” in the Barefoot College they were stone crushers. And Kalavati and Zayda were house maids. Today they are barefoot solar engineers who have learned to fabricate, wire, and set up solar energy systems and have helped 124 households in nearby villages in Andhra Pradesh, India, obtain solar power, while earning a better living for themselves.

They are among the group of “barefoot engineers” from poor rural backgrounds who have been trained in construction, installation, and maintenance of everything from solar panels to rainwater collection tanks at the Barefoot College and are now harnessing solar power to electrify villages in India, Afghanistan and Ethiopia.

Barefoot College was set up in 1972 in Tilonia, a village in one of India’s largest, driest and poorest states. Its success has prompted the Asian Development Bank and other organizations to fund barefoot startups in African countries such as Cameroon, Gambia and Sierra Leone.

The Barefoot Revolution

The origin of the barefoot revolution can be traced to the early 1960s when the Mao Tse Tung administration in China sent groups of medicos to work in villages as ‘barefoot doctors’, in a bid to use professional skills in the rural health sector. Barefoot revolution is grassroots and cooperative innovation at its very best. It is based on the belief that the key to alleviating rural poverty lies within communities themselves and do not necessarily come from urban professionals, government intervention or big foreign aid packages

Confidence-Building Methods and Hands-on Training

The Barefoot College identifies the poor, rural jobless and unemployable youth who have been unable to finish their formal education and have returned to their villages as dropouts. These very individuals are trained to be “barefoot” doctors, teachers, engineers, architects, designers, metal workers, IT specialists and communicators. This system does not consider educational degree important when it comes to developing people. Simple confidence-building methods and hands-on training are relied upon to achieve results.

Barefoot college is based on the belief that rural communities posses the wisdom and skill to identify and solve their own problems. The Barefoot College sets out to impart informal, non-structured, on-the-job practical training till such a time that the community develops the confidence and competence to handle their problems without outside help.

The man behind this growing grassroots movement is an Indian visionary, Sanjit Bunker Roy, whose efforts have earned him awards and praise worldwide.

Teacher is the Learner and Learner the Teacher

The Barefoot College, where, according to Roy, the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher, encourages people to make mistakes so that they can learn humility, curiosity, the courage to take risks, to innovate, to improvise and to constantly experiment.

The College is fully solar powered. The installation, fabrication and maintenance of the entire system are in the hands of rural youth who have not gone beyond primary school. With solar energy Tilonia became the first village in India with access to e-mail.

Using local skills and local material the college’s rooftop rainwater harvesting program has constructed more than 1,000 collection structures in 17 Indian states, benefitting more than 220,000 people. And at its 200 health centers trained health workers can aid in emergencies and teach about health issues such as hygiene, vaccinations, and other preventative care. The success of rainwater harvesting in recharging groundwater in Tilonia led to its adoption as state policy in several parts of India.

Five Principles

The Barefoot College is founded on five principles:

- Equality:The program treats all members as equal, regardless of sex, class, education, or caste. - Collectivity: Collective decision-making practiced by one and all. - Self reliance: Members are helped to work together to develop the community. - Decentralization: The program is committed to local decision-making, and grassroots level. - Austerity: The staff members lead a simple life committed to generating a close community and a stimulating, creative environment.

Where Such Colleges can be Set Up?

- Where there is extreme poverty. - Where the neglect of the rural communities reaches such proportions that they are forced to develop and depend on their own knowledge and skills. - Where people depend on each other and not on outside help. - Where the oral tradition is high because of greater illiteracy. In such societies knowledge and skills are traditionally passed down from one generation to another.

Who can Participate?

School drop outs, and those rejected by society because of their academic failure. Those who do not stand a chance of getting even the lowest government jobs.

Reference: http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/B…