Bunker Roy: Barefoot College for the Poor

In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men — many of them illiterate — to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It’s called the Barefoot College, and its founder, Bunker Roy has changed lives for the better and empowered the poor to gain access to a bright future.

In a country where countless people live on less than a dollar a day, Mr.Roy has initiated the Barefoot College which has transformed lives and galvanized positive social change.

About the Barefoot College

Established in 1972, the Barefoot College is a non-government organisation that has been providing basic services and solutions to problems in rural communities, with the objective of making them self-sufficient and sustainable. These ‘Barefoot solutions’ can be broadly categorised into solar energy, water, education, health care, rural handicrafts, people’s action, communication, women’s empowerment and wasteland development.

The College believes that for any rural development activity to be successful and sustainable, it must be based in the village as well as managed and owned by those whom it serves. Therefore, all Barefoot initiatives whether social, political or economic, are planned and implemented by a network of rural men and women who are known as ‘Barefoot Professionals’.

Rural men and women irrespective of age, who are barely literate or not at all, and have no hope of getting even the lowest government job, are being trained to work as day and night school teachers, doctors, midwives, dentists, health workers, balsevikas, solar engineers, solar cooker engineers, water drillers, hand pump mechanics, architects, artisans, designers, masons, communicators, water testers, phone operators, blacksmiths, carpenters, computer instructors, accountants and kabaad-se-jugaad professionals.

With little guidance, encouragement and space to grow and exhibit their talent and abilities, people who have been considered ‘very ordinary’ and written off by society, are doing extraordinary things that defy description.

Since its inception, the long term objective of the Barefoot College has been to work with marginalized, exploited and impoverished rural poor, living on less than $1 a day, and lift them over the poverty line with dignity and self respect. The dream was to establish a rural college in India that was built by and exclusively for the poor.

What the rural, impoverished and marginalised think important is reflected and internalised in the beliefs of the College. The Barefoot College is one of the few places in India where Mahatma Gandhi’s spirit of service and thoughts on sustainability, are still alive and respected.

The College has adopted the Gandhian ideas into its lifestyle and work ethics, holding it true and relevant universally even in the 21st Century.

Why Barefoot?

It is symbolic of the recognition, respect and importance the College gives to the collective knowledge and skill that the poor have;
By calling it ‘barefoot’ they want to give its application a unique category of its own that is superior, sophisticated and enduring. Far more valuable than any other paper qualification.

Why College?

Because it is a Centre for learning, with a difference:-

A centre of learning and unlearning
Where the teacher is the learner and the learner a teacher;
Where everyone is expected to keep an open mind, try new and crazy ideas, make mistakes and try again;
Where even those who have no degrees are welcome to come, work and learn;
Where those are accepted who are not eligible for even the lowest government jobs;
Where tremendous value is placed on the dignity of labour, of sharing and those are willing to work with their hands;
Where no certificates, degrees or diplomas are given.

The Barefoot College is viewed as a success story because it is shown as an example of what is possible if very poor people are allowed to develop themselves. It is a new concept that has stood the test of time. What the College has effectively demonstrated is how sustainable the combination of traditional knowledge (barefoot) and demystified modern skills can be, when the tools are in the hands of those who are considered ‘very ordinary’ and are written off by urban society.

The ‘Barefoot approach’ may be viewed as a ‘concept’, ‘solution’, ‘revolution’, ‘design’ or an ‘inspiration’ but it is really a simple message that can easily be replicated by the poor and for the poor in neglected and underprivileged communities anywhere the world. Thus, the demystified and decentralised ‘barefoot approach’ of community management, control and ownership has demonstrated the power of simple solutions.

The Barefoot College demystifies and decentralises sophisticated technology by handing its control to poor communities in rural India. It believes that even the poorest of poor cannot be denied the right to use, manage and own technology to improve their own lives. The aim has been to develop the capacity and competence of communities to take decisions and responsibilities and improve their management capabilities. The Barefoot College enhances their self-confidence by providing them access to learning to harness their ability to serve their own community, thus making them more confidently self-reliant.

The Barefoot College encourages a hands-on learning-by-doing process of gaining practical knowledge and skills rather than written tests and paper based qualifications. It promotes and strengthens the kind of education one absorbs from family, community, and personal experience. It applies the knowledge and skills that the poor already possess for their own development thus making them independent and letting them live with self respect and dignity. Very ordinary people written off by society are doing extraordinary things that defy description.

Graduates of the Barefoot College Share their Experiences:

Dhapu Bai explains how her training as a midwife at the Barefoot College as given her the ability to impart vital health information to village women in this video below:

Bhanwar discusses how she “crossed the veil” and went to work for the Barefoot College. Her courage has given livelihood and supplementary income opportunities to women in her village who work together, regardless of caste in this video below:

Kailish discusses how the Barefoot College gave her employment which has allowed her to care for herself and family, and travel outside the traditional village setting in this video below:

Kamala discusses how she came to be solar engineer at the Barefoot College with no formal education in this video below:

Bila talks about the various opportunities given to her by the Barefoot College from work in handicrafts, and computers to teaching in a day school. The College’s efforts have helped change the social barriers that keep many village women homebound, in this video:

Lalita Bai, a water mapping engineer at the Barefoot College explains the process in which she learned in using computer without having any formal education and how her new found confidence has given her the courage to remove her veil and the power to overcome traditional caste constraints, in this video below:

Bhanwar Gopal, an artist from the Barefoot College, prepares traditional Rajasthani masks for plays and puppet shows with material which is recycled.

The Barefoot College creates livelihoods directly as well as indirectly, through its programmes such as Solar Energy, Water, Education, Health Care, Rural Handicrafts, People’s Action, Communication, Women’s Empowerment and Wasteland Development.
Since all programmes and its initiatives are planned, managed and implemented by members of the rural community, each one acts as a source of employment to some degree.

People’s Action, Communication and Women’s Empowerment initiatives, indirectly create employment within rural communities to reduce migration. They encourage and motivate poor and unemployed rural youth, as well as middle-aged men and women, to seek jobs that help to develop rural communities and improve the quality of life.

The Barefoot College is one such source of livelihood, through which any (adult) member from the rural community, irrespective of gender, caste, ethnicity, age and schooling, can work for the development of rural communities, as well as provide basic services and sustainable solutions through a combination of demystified technologies and traditional knowledge and skills.

About Bunker Roy

Development projects the world over run into one crucial point: For a project to live on, it needs to be organic, owned and sustained by those it serves. In 1972, Sanjit “Bunker” Roy founded the Barefoot College, in the village of Tilonia in Rajasthan, India, with just this mission: to provide basic services and solutions in rural communities with the objective of making them self-sufficient. These “barefoot solutions” can be broadly categorized into solar energy, water, education, health care, rural handicrafts, people’s action, communication, women’s empowerment and wasteland development. The Barefoot College education program, for instance, teaches literacy and also skills, encouraging learning-by-doing. (Literacy is only part of it.) Bunker’s organization has also successfully trained grandmothers from Africa and the Himalayan region to be solar engineers so they can bring electricity to their remote villages.

Sanjit “Bunker” Roy was born in 1945 in Burnpur in West Bengal, India. His nickname “Bunker” comes from the Bengali habit of rhyming siblings’ names; his brother’s name was “Shanker.”

What changed the course of his life was the Bihar famine in the mid 1960s. He went to Bihar “out of curiosity,” he says, “to get to know another bit of India,” but the suffering he witnessed affected him deeply. Subsequently, much to his mother’s distress he dedicated himself to improving the lives of the rural poor.

“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?” Roy asks. It was this motivation that drove him in 1971, to found the Barefoot College in Tilonia.

He was selected as one of Time 100, the 100 most influential personalities in the world by TIME Magazine in 2010.

In 2002 he was selected for Geneva-based Schwab Foundation’s award.

Watch Mr. Roy’s inspiring TEDX talk in the video below:

With his abiding compassion for the rural poor in his native India, Sanjit “Bunker” Roy, has nurtured a grass-roots social entrepreneurship that is redefining the way the world thinks about fighting poverty.

As he says, Barefoot College is “a place of learning and unlearning: where the teacher is the learner and the learner is the teacher.”

“Roy’s idea is that India and Africa are full of people with skills, knowledge and resourcefulness who are not recognised as engineers, architects or water experts but who can bring more to communities than governments or big businesses.”

How You Can Help

The Barefoot College draws on a mix of resources, such as the Government of India, International funding agencies, private foundations, as well as corporate and individual sponsors, for applying cost-effective and self-sustainable Barefoot solutions in remote, rural villages of India and abroad.

Partners as well as donors provide the crucial support needed to replicate the Barefoot approach. So far, it has been replicated in 17 states of India, 15 countries in Africa, 2 countries in Asia and 1 country in South America. Any contribution, monetary or voluntary in nature, helps the College in social developments of poor, rural communities. For instance, a contribution of:-

$100 educates one child in a night school for 6 months.
$250 helps in fabrication and maintenance of one solar lantern in a poor rural household; thereby providing light for 4 hours every night for at least 2 years.
$500 pays for the installation and maintenance of one fixed solar lighting unit in a rural non-electrified household, and provides it 4 hours of light for at least 5 years.
$1,000 trains 5 semi-literate women to become Barefoot computer instructors in 6 months.
$5,000 will install a rainwater harvesting tank in a rural school to collect 50,000 litres of water that will provide 50 children with drinking water for 6 months, or will solar-electrify 10 households and train 2 rural, semi-literate or illiterate women to become Barefoot Solar Engineers in 6 months.

(Those who wish to make a contribution can do so on www.tilonia.com Friends of Tilonia Inc., a US-based 501(c) 3 tax-exempt organization, will provide 100% of your tax-deductible contribution to the Barefoot College for the programs you have chosen to support).

To know more about the Barefoot college and how you can help, please visit this link