Energy - India
In six months, Indian grandmothers learn to be solar engineers.
Then they return to their dark villages to install solar electricity. Everything changes: children can study, midwives can deliver babies, residents can walk safely at night; it becomes possible to use cell phones and refrigerators.
Today, those Indian grandmothers have returned to the Barefoot College, and are teaching grandmothers from all over the developing world to be solar engineers.
Without a common language, they teach with demonstrations, color-coding and gestures.
Indian grandmothers and African grandmothers tell about their lives and experiences in GRANDMOTHER POWER.
News About Grandmothers in India
Updates about the grandmother groups in Grandmother Power
Multi Media:
In April 2010, Sanjit “Bunker” Roy (who co-founded the Barefoot College) described the school to His Holiness The 14th Dalai Lama at the Mind & Life Conference in Zurich.
Solar Grandmothers Grandmothers from all over the developing world are learning solar engineering at the Barefoot College in Tilonia Rajasthan and bringing light to their dark villages. They are featured in the India chapter of GRANDMOTHER POWER. A remarkable documentary about them just debuted at the Toronto Film Festival. Enjoy the trailer and watch your local theater's schedule so you can see this inspiring film!
Gulab, a grandmother who teaches solar engineering and who is featured in GRANDMOTHER POWER, is interviewed in this video.
Bila, a Barefoot College grandmother who teaches at the school, is featured in GRANDMOTHER POWER and this video.
In the News:
Website: The Barefoot College (which began teaching rural people to do be doctors, teachers, dentists, computer operators and more) has now trained 895 grandmother solar engineers in 64 countries in the developing world.
CNN reported on the Barefoot College grandmothers in January 2011, when the solar engineering class included 46 grandmothers from 8 countries as geographically disparate as Colombia, Burkina Faso, Guatemala and Jordan.
Bunker Roy spoke at TED Global in Scotland in July 2011 and shared lessons learned from teaching the illiterate, rural poor at the Barefoot College.
Update: Wired Magazine-UK’s April 2011 feature article on The Barefoot College starts with the tale of a grandmother leaving her family in Namibia to study solar engineering in at the Barefoot College.
Behind the Scenes: Here are some photographs that are not in the book: people and places that captured Paola’s attention while working at the Barefoot College.
