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Illuminating thoughts
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Founder of the Barefoot College, Bunker Roy holds high regard for the creativity of rural folk
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SMILE OF SUCCESS Bunker Roy
“When I told my mother that I was quitting a lucrative bank job to work in the village, she was horrified,” recalled Bunker Roy. “She did not speak to me for years.”
Bold decision
This was way back in the 1970s. Today, Roy can justifiably be proud of his decision. The Social Work and Research Centre – more famously known as the Barefoot College – he founded in 1972 in Tilonia, a nondescript village in Rajasthan, has gained national and international recognition for its astounding success in identifying poor rural jobless and unemployable youth, and training them to be ‘barefoot’ engineers, teachers, communicators, architects, and IT professionals has been a role model to others.
Going far beyond the confines of Rajasthan, the Barefoot College has worked in several places from Ladakh to Kerala and even in villages of other countries, including Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Bhutan, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
Achievements
The College’s achievements range from making holistic community development involving all age groups and social sectors; use of rain water for irrigation, recharging of ground water and providing quality water for human and animal consumption.
It has succeeded in creating employment opportunities for rural men and women; setting up night schools and promotion of literacy; using solar energy to electrify homes of hundreds of villages; provision of new markets for rural artisans, to establishing women’s pressure group to fight for minimum wages.
“We have never believed in paper qualifications,” asserted Roy. “We place our trust in the power of traditional knowledge, skills and experience of ordinary people.”He is unabashed in saluting the creativity and innovative spirit of rural folk, especially women. “These women are incredible. Once they know the basics, they can create wonders.
Servicing hand pumps, designing water proofing roofs in buildings, and even handling computers comes to them with least effort.” Roy cited some outstanding examples of women who had mastered the art and science of producing, installing and maintaining sophisticated solar equipment. Incidentally, the Barefoot College in Tilonia is the only fully solar electrified college in the whole country.
“It was built in 1986 at a princely cost of Rs. 56 per square feet by a local villager, Bhanwarlal Jat who still cannot read or write.”
Another feather in Tilonia’s cap is function of children’s parliament which has its own representatives of young girls and boys. “In 2001 it won the World’s Children’s Prize from the Queen of Sweden in Mariefeld, Sweden,” recapped Roy.
“The leader of the group was invited to receive the award. Looking at the girl, the Queen was astonished by her poise and confidence. She asked me to find out from where she got that robust confidence. The girl coolly replied, ‘I am the Prime Minister!’”
GIRIDHAR KHASNIS
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