Barefoot College is a non-governmental organization set up in the year 1972 in Tilonia village in Rajasthan, by Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy, a social activist and an educator. The school teaches illiterate women from underdeveloped nations and villages around the world to become doctors, solar engineers, architects, etc., without requiring them to read or write. Their biggest achievements have been in the sphere of solar energy, perhaps because Bunker Roy strongly believes that solar energy is the answer to our energy problems as apposed to other renewable sources of energy like wind, biomass etc. Bunker Roy’s idea behind setting up the school was to create a ‘low cost, community based, bottom up solution, which would be replicable anywhere in the world’. The school was started with three women from Afghanistan who went on to impart the acquired skills to many more women like them back home. Today, the school has trained several hundred women (mothers and grandmothers) from about 8 countries in Asia, Africa and South America. The school campus is now fully solar powered, down to the kitchen where the food is cooked using a parabolic solar cooker. Barefoot college has so far helped electrify over 90,000 houses—in the process helping save several billion litres of kerosene that would have been used otherwise.
Considering the school is based in Rajasthan, one of the biggest problems that it needed to tackle initially was that of water shortage; Rajasthan being probably the driest state in India. The non-availability of water nearby made the women walk long distances to fetch it because of which their health suffered and young girls never managed enough time for school. After Barefoot College was set up, the administration in collaboration with the locals turned to rooftop rainwater harvesting as a simple yet effective solution to this problem. Today, rainwater harvesting has enabled several hundred schools and community centres in the area to collect and store close to 30 million litres of rainwater at a minimal cost of roughly rupees 5 per litre. Now, the villages in the district have ample water for drinking and sanitation. The women are doing much better too since they don’t have to walk long distances to fetch water anymore. Many more girls go to school during the day as well and those who still cannot because of household responsibilities are encouraged to go to night schools.
Barefoot College has helped solve grave problems in the district and is a conservation and energy-efficiency success story that has been recognized with awards and accolades the world over.
