EDUCATION FOR RURAL WOMEN AS SOLAR ENGINEERS

Rurally poor communities and especially women lack access to education, skills training and as a result entrepreneurial opportunity. This creates poor health conditions and a lack of prosperity that is passed on to the next generation in remote rural communities. Barefoot College transforms rural lives by training women as solar engineers and by educating them in financial and digital literacy, microenterprise creation, health, human and civil rights, and sustainable growth. 

Women are ideally placed in rural communities where they previously had no work or opportunities to electrify their communities, and to educate their family and friends in how to use access to electricity to create businesses and access educational and vocational training through the internet. Communities in Barefoot’s programs experience huge positive changes through the learning and application of skills, business creation, the attainment of financial stability, and educational programs to pass these methods on to the next generation.

24 million Latin Americans have no proper access to energy, most of them rural. They have no communications or internet capability, are cut off from schooling and work opportunities, and have no hope of vocational training or skills education. This means they exist in a cycle of poverty and subsistence farming that perpetuates itself, and that is accompanied by health problems due to the burning of harmful fossil fuels and poor understanding of concepts such as sustainable farming and crop rotation. Lack of electricity means lack of light after dark, which makes it almost impossible for those young people who are in school to complete work when they get home. The marginalization of women from the adult work force further means that men work desperately hard in this negative cycle simply to subsist during daylight hours. Barefoot leverages solar energy education of women and rural electrification to solve all of these problems, with the overall effect of giving rural people the time, knowledge, tools and health to learn skills that can make them prosperous over the long term, and to take control of their financial, vocational and educational development for the future, thus solving rural poverty.

We are working with rural and indigenous communities across Latin America (42 million people speaking more than 400 native languages). These communities are composed of people living in isolated rural areas that lack access to infrastructure services, electrical energy and employment opportunities. They exist below the poverty line in frequently extreme situations, but in areas where natural resources and biodiverse ecosystems are plentiful, and can be used to improve the prosperity of communities in a sustainable manner with the right knowledge and tools. We work with communities to understand their individual situation, and to customize both the type of solar electrification they need, as well as the educational, vocational and entrepreneurial opportunities that are most useful to them based on their location, heritage and traditions, and pre-existing skills that can be made versatile in a modern economy. We focus on educating women first as the spreaders of knowledge because making women economically viable members of the adult workforce immediately lessens socio-economic strain on poor communities where women have previously been marginalized. Our solar training and electrification works as the long-term foundation for addressing the individual skills-needs of each community. 

Our solution works in three stages. First, we train women as solar engineers and educate them in digital and financial literacy, microenterprise creation, health, civil and human rights, and sustainable growth. We then provide materials to allow women to solar electrify their communities, and to set up basic internet facilities, as well as clean water and toilets where necessary for the wellbeing of the community. The third phase of our solution is the active implementation of educational and vocational skills training programs customized to the needs of each community based on location and practical usefulness, and done using a literacy optional color-coding and sign language education system. This is key, as it allows poor individuals to begin actively learning skills and increasing their prosperity without the need to wait until full literacy is achieved. 

Along with solar electrification, trained female solar engineers are able to build and sell small solar goods such as portable solar lanterns and cookers, which is of great benefit to surrounding, non-electrified communities as well as the main electrified area. This process takes between 12 to 18 months for serious improvements to quality of life to become visible in financial terms, as the initial training of female solar engineers, or Solar Mamas as we call them, takes 6 months. However, immediate solar electrification at the end of that six month period creates huge improvements to the lives of all living in a community that is part of the program.

All processes and materials that are used during training and implementation of electrification and skills and business training and creation are designed to be simple and largely mobile. Each community takes full ownership as a collective of all the solar materials with which they are provided; these include solar panels, connectivity equipment and wiring; lighting tools and facilities; internet connectivity tools for basic internet access; shelters and building structures that communities are given materials to assemble to be used to store solar and other equipment. On a community by community basis depending on need, the materials provided to communities may also include water collection and storage tools, and vocational or work based equipment for professions such as beekeeping and coffee production.

Barefoot’s solution is unique in its approach to solving rural poverty and a lack of education, employment and skills opportunities. Solutions to each of these problems already exist, as do solutions to rural water shortages and health problems, as well as those focused only on gender discrimination. What is clear is that all of these solutions are individually impacted by each other. Barefoot takes all of these problems and identifies their root cause, which in rurally poor Latin America is a lack of safe, usable electrical power. We train women and use them to establish long-term renewable energy infrastructure, and we specifically leverage this to solve what we view as a systematic chain of problems in rural poverty centered on a lack of free time, education, vocational and skills training, connectivity, and financial stability. Our solution is innovative because it does not actually solve specific problems, but rather creates a renewable energy ecosystem wherein socio-economic problems are all inter-related, and are solved in a way that means rural poverty is genuinely eradicated for the long-term in a community. We use technology and methods that already exist for individual problems, but we combine them in a manner that is uniquely innovative. The fact that we do this with literacy optional teaching methods makes this particularly powerful, as it allows huge improvements to quality of life to occur quickly, and in a self-sufficient manner.

Barefoot College has worldwide programs that have been successful in reaching 2.2 million beneficiaries across 93 countries. We have trained over 2500 women as fully capable solar technicians and engineers, and have achieved in areas that are ahead of Guatemala in our scaling process – such as India – full night school and business production capabilities in rural communities in Rajasthan. Our track record makes it clear that our program is an effective way of reducing rural poverty by addressing access to education, skills and employment opportunities through leveraging renewable energy as a long-term resource in communities to create prosperity.

We expect our solution to work both because it has worked before, and also because we take a detailed and data-driven approach to meeting the needs of each rural community in order to ensure its success. We use cloud-based monitoring and evaluation software to gather data continuously throughout all of our projects so that we can learn from them and improve in the future; however, we also rigorously assess what type of electrification, education and training each community will benefit most from before and during a project. This means that we are able to effectively customize our approach to maximize its benefit in a very real and practical way; we can adjust each project as it progresses at any point, which, simply put, means that we can expect our solutions to work due to our ability to alter and improve on them whenever they do not fulfil expectations and needs. 

Barefoot College currently serves 150 rural indigenous women whom we have trained in Latin America and the Caribbean. They live across 13 countries, have electrified 50 villages and positively impacted 2500 families as direct beneficiaries (15000) people. Beneficiaries live across area composed of tropical rainforest, Andean mountains, highlands, deserts, and coastal regions. Establishing a Barefoot College Regional Training Center in Guatemala will allow us to educate an additional 50 women each year, which will improve the number of direct beneficiaries we can reach by 2500 families (15000 individuals) each year. In 5 years, Barefoot College will have trained 250 women, and will have directly benefited 12500 families (75000 individuals). 

Our goal beyond 5 years is to fully train 400 women as solar engineers and educators; this will mean that our programs have significantly changed thinking surrounding rural women and how to reduce rural poverty in remote areas in Latin America and the Caribbean. It is important to us to achieve these numbers within the stated timeframe, as 5 to 10 years’ worth of progress means that the next generation of children and young adults will see huge positive change occurring before their eyes as they grow up, and be able to begin to meaningfully direct their own studies and interests in directions that will allow them to benefit in their own futures from the changes solar electrification and quality education, skills and employment opportunities bring to rurally poor communities. 

Our immediate goal in the next year is to have a fully functional Regional Training Center operating in Guatemala to train women. In the short term this will mean that our resources immediately and regionally available to run and assist local projects will be hugely augmented. It will also allow us to train 50 new female solar engineers. Our mission as an organization is to make our programs ultimately self-sufficient, as this is the most effective way to transform lives for the long-term. People and communities need to be given control over their own development and socio-economic stability; we view our goal as providing rurally poor areas with the knowledge and tools to do this. Our approach to customization means that large scaling is a realistic possibility for us; expanding our programs in Latin America and the Caribbean is itself a scaling initiative based on programs we already have around the world, as especially in India. It is also our goal to use the Regional Training Center in Guatemala as a base through which to significantly expand our strategic partnerships in the region with NGOs, government, and private sector organizations and actors. This is a further important step in our ability to scale, and the success of our programs in reaching rural communities and transforming lives there in the most positive way possible with regards to education, skills and employment opportunities. Our goal is to scale our approach to any community that needs assistance at locally, municipally, federally or nationally.

Barriers that currently exist to our programs are chiefly financial, logistical, diplomatic, and social in nature. It is frequently difficult for Barefoot as an NGO to secure adequate funds within the right time frame to pursue projects as planned. Whilst we do have a very high success rate despite difficulties of this type, it is an ongoing battle to do so. Logistically it can be challenging to transport materials to locations that are especially remote, or that have suffered from disasters that cause infrastructure that was already lacking to be further damaged. Diplomatically, we find it complex and challenging to secure buy-in from national governments to do more than spectate in countries where we work; whether understandably or not, governments prefer to see concrete results that other organizations have achieved before stepping in themselves. The most important and serious barrier that we face – and that we are excellent at overcoming – is social in nature. It is a difficult and often fraught process to attempt to assist communities in improving the way they treat women, and in changing how they do things when they feel resistant to new methodologies or ideas. It is also frequently the case that these difficulties are compounded by regional racism and tribal enmities that make it hard for communities to feel they can adopt new methodologies without a slight, loss of honor, or other detrimental reduction in status occurring. 

We are relentless in working to attain the support of a multitude or organizations, and keeping a diversified stream of revenue operating in order to be able to support projects. Logistically, in order to deal with location challenges, each and every one of our projects now incorporates a ground partner, which is a local organization familiar with the area the project will take place in. This allows us to combine our expertise in international shipping and transport with local knowledge of terrain and how to overcome logistical problems. Diplomatically, Barefoot has been fortunate to be able to demonstrate significant success in regions around the world that national level governments such as those of India and Tanzania, and corporate actors such as Apple, feel able to assist us with diplomatic issues where necessary to further our projects.

Socially, we conquer barriers by the very simple expedient of showing communities that treating women as productive working equals improves their lives. We do not seek to impose Western ideologies on any culture, or to try and convince them of anything they do not feel is relevant to them; we put a program in place that shows the practical value of women as knowledge leaders and generators of wealth and positive change. This makes communities far more willing to accept gender equality than any other method we have tried. The practical demonstration of success and prosperity driving from our programs is also an excellent way to convince communities to change their thinking and methodologies.

We currently work across 13 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. As previously mentioned, we have trained solar engineers operating across 50 communities and in some cases surrounding regions. As already discussed, our activities cover full solar engineering training for women, as well as subsequent electrification, and then growth of connectivity, education and skills training programs. Regionally, multiple communities currently participate in profitable coffee growth and production to a successful enough degree that the product is now sold in the USA as well as in Guatemala. A more recent entrepreneurial activity is the farming of turmeric, which is coming about through partnerships that are being formed between small indigenous Barefoot communities as regional farmers adjacent and nearby to them. 

We have also been engaging in active disaster recovery and prevention methods; Barefoot’s focus on renewable, self-sufficient energy capabilities makes communities that work with us uniquely capable of recovering quickly when natural disasters cause infrastructure damage and upheaval to things like traditional grid electricity power and formal classroom-based schooling. In concert with this, our activities incorporate for all communities a significant focus on minimizing climate change and maximizing sustainability. This is particularly important due to the fact that all of our communities exist in regions possessed of naturally valuable ecosystems and resources; we are very conscious of the need in some regions for communities to push back against the harmful activities of minding corporations, poorly thought-ought public policies, and irresponsible behavior by corporate actors. 

Barefoot College has 220 full time staff in our global headquarters in India, and a further 40 global staff around the world. Our Guatemala Center will have 20 full time staff in Batzul (a rural highlands village where the facility will be located). Our trainee solar engineers will add 25 women on a rolling in and out basis to the numbers of people present at the facility every 6 months. We will look to add 22 Guatemalan women to our training and education team for future solar engineers globally. 

Barefoot College is a multinational organization composed of diverse and globally experienced staff. 70% of our Indian headquarters team is Indian; the remaining 30% and our global staff are made up of nationalities from Asia, Africa, Europe, Australasia, North America, Central America and Latin America. We are best placed to deliver this solution successfully because we are hugely experienced in providing it all over the world. Our experiences using solar electrification to create socio-economic growth and stability in remote and rurally inaccessible locations around the planet means that there are very few problems and situations that we have not experienced before. This in turn means that there are vanishingly few problems that we do not have efficient solutions for; it also means that when such problems do occur, our wealth of experience in creative and innovative solutions to unforeseen challenges allow us to solve them quickly. The diversity and cultural experience of our team means that we are further ideally equipped to deliver our solution with sensitivity and tact where needed, which is central in an organization where we believe firmly that it is vital to respect the traditions and heritage of all communities that we work with. Our ability to operate in this way means that we can help communities overcome prejudices and deficiencies without making them reliant on outsiders; in short, we are perfectly equipped as an organization to make sure that the result of our solution is a community become self-sufficient in its development and stability. 

We are currently partnering with UNDP, UN Women, The World Food Program, The Amazon Conservation Team, Fundacion Paraguaya, ONAMIAP, Fondo Accion, The World Energy Council, and HIVOS Latin America. These are all ground partners who are helping to deliver programs locally. 

Our business model is an innovative systems change and partnership model that operates through a global network of connecting organizations that are NGOs, governmental, and some private sector. Our key customers and beneficiaries are people living in extreme rural poverty in geographically isolated regions around the planet. Within that population, we focus especially on women, as it is clear from data gathered across the past few decades that women both suffer the worst effects of rural poverty, and are key to successfully changing rural thinking about how to pursue financially viable opportunities and educational goals. The service we provide to our beneficiaries has three layers. Layer one is simple – we train women to be fully fledged solar engineers and provide them with the tools to solar electrify their communities, thus providing rurally poor regions with electricity, clean water, and internet connectivity. Layer two is the setting up of educational and vocational training in communities by our trained female solar engineers, who are additionally educated in financial and digital literacy, microenterprise creation, health, human and civil rights, and sustainable growth using a literacy optional custom-made teaching model. Once educational and vocational training programs have been set up in newly electrified communities, layer three begins. This involves the formation and growth of small businesses, either using new skills acquired as a result of internet connectivity and education, or leveraging access to electricity to monetize pre-existing skills in a stable manner. 

A diversified stream of revenue is central to our ability to adapt to challenging situations and locations. In keeping with this, we derive funding wherever possible from governmental organizations, NGOs, and private sector partnerships at the same time. Once a program is up and running and small businesses are being created and grown in communities as a result of upskilling, profits from these businesses then become available to pay ongoing or additional costs that a project may incur as it grows. Any region where a program is up and running is also able to begin engaging in trade and business both locally and internationally; an example of this is in our Tanzanian program, where women now trade in honey with Danish and Tanzanian organizations, and Indonesia, where women repair and sell fishing nets regionally to make a profit. In Guatemala, coffee production is now up and running and turning a profit for the women who initiated it as a result of our programs. The most difficult part of our funding is the beginning of a program; once we are able to show results, and once small businesses begin to turn profits, the program is to an extent protected by its own earnings. To cover this key early stage, we aggressively pursue funding opportunities for which we qualify – such as this one – and with which we genuinely believe we can make a difference to the lives of those we work with in the most efficient and effective way possible. 

As previously mentioned, a major hurdle that we need help with is getting the project off the ground. We already have programs in Latin America and the Caribbean, and we are at a stage where in order to continue to grow, and to train more women and scale up our solution to help a greater number of communities, we urgently need to establish a Regional Training Center in Guatemala. Securing the funding to begin a project of this type is both difficult and vital to its success. Winning the TPrize Challenge and being awarded funding would allow us to establish our Regional Training Center. This would mean we can double the number of women we have trained over the next year, and consequently double the number of communities we have programs in. We have reached capacity in terms of the women and communities that we can work with without having the vital assistance that a Regional Training Center will provide in terms of resources, both logistical and educational. We are in a fortunate position to be able to do this if we awarded the TPrize due to the relatively low cost of materials and labor in Guatemala where we plan to establish our Center, but also because of the enthusiasm of our ground partners and the fact that we have already acquired the building that we plan to use for our Training Center, and need only the capability to fully outfit it and get it functioning.

We want very much to partner with the Interamerican Development Bank, the WWF, the European Union in support of our project moving forwards.