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29 March 2024

India's Barefoot College

Published
By AFP

It's a sight you'd never expect to see in rural India.
 
Women from all over Africa learning how to be solar engineers.
 
Most of these students are completely illiterate, but that's never been a barrier at Barefoot College.
 
Asunta Achan went to school for one year in her native South Sudan, but after four months here, she can rig up a solar lamp with her eyes closed.
 
There are no textbooks or exams, she simply learns by doing.
 
"I take solar in my mind. I take more solar to go in my village and I put it all.the 3000 people is taking the solar, all. If there is light, the children are walking at night."
 
The college opened with humble ambitions to help Indian villagers. Thirty years on students are brought in from all over the world with funds from the Indian government.
 
Still this success wasn't easy to come by.
 
While illiterate men and women can enroll at the school, the traditional 'purda' or 'veil' system prevents many women from even leaving their homes.
 
"In some places there were traditions like wherever men were sitting, women couldn't walk past in shoes. They would have to remove and carry their shoes to pass. Or women couldn't get on cycles to travel. There were these kinds of practices in villages but we've slowly broken them."
 
Mothers and even grandmothers who lived behind closed doors are now working as experienced mechanics, dental nurses and solar engineers.
 
Magan Kanwar was one of the first to exchange her veil for a soldering iron.
 
"Many women who work here, their husbands drink and beat them. If there's no food for their kids at least the women can work and look after them, educate them, run the household."
 
In villages around the college signs of the Barefoot ladies are everywhere through their solar lamps.
 
They are part of an unassuming revolution that could change the lives of generations to come.