BARE FOOT
BAREFOOT
COLLEGE




BAREFOOT COLLEGE

APPROACH AND OBJECTIVES

WOMEN

SAMPDA

SAMPDA OBJECTIVES

WATER

EDUCATION

HEALTH

FIVE PRINCIPLES OF BAREFOOT COLLEGE

BAREFOOT COLLEGE LINKS

BAREFOOT COLLEGE RESOURCES



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SECTION 1



BARE FOOT
BAREFOOT
COLLEGE




Barefoot college known as Social Work and
Research Centre is an Non-governmental
organization founded by Bunker Roy in 1972.

It is a solar-powered school that teaches
illiterate women from impoverished villages
to become doctors, solar engineers,
architects, and other such professions.

The school is located at Tilonia village,
Rajasthan, India. It serves a population
of over 125,000 people.

One program of the Barefoot College brings
women from villages in rural Africa that
run without electricity to the Barefoot
College.

They are then trained by local Indian
women at the Barefoot College. At the
end of their training, they return to
Africa with new skills that allow them
to install solar electricity in their
villages.



BAREFOOT COLLAGE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barefoot_College



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. Therefore, Barefoot College is
a radical departure from the traditional
concept of a “college”.



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,

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.




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SECTION 2



BAREFOOT
COLLEGE
APPROACH
AND
ITS
OBJECTIVES




Provide sustainable solutions to
improve the quality of life in
poor, rural communities.


Reduce migration by generating
employment within villages.


Provide vocational training to
semi-literate and illiterate
men and women through the
process of learning-by-doing.


Reduce drudgery of rural women
and girls by providing them
access to education, vocational
training, health care etc.


Empower rural women socially,
economically and politically.


Encourage community based,
owned and managed initiatives.


Demystify technologies and
decentralise their uses to
improve their quality of
living.


Use and promote traditional
knowledge and skills that
have been passed on through
generations.




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SECTION 3



WOMEN




Traditionally, women in Indian villages
do more than 70% of the domestic and
agricultural work. They are responsible
for sowing and reaping, fetching water,
taking care of children and livestock,
cooking, washing and cleaning the house
etc. However, their inputs are not
regarded as ‘proper’ work.

The College focuses its efforts on a
holistic development of women by
empowering them financially, socially
as well as politically. As part of
their social empowerment, rural women
have been organized into groups that
collectively support and look out for
each other.

Instead of forcing bookish ‘literacy’
onto rural women that will be of little
use to them, the College chooses to
‘educate’ them in ‘legal literacy’ that
can help solve problems like violation
of women’s rights, minimum wages,
domestic violence, and Right to
Information.

The Barefoot approach is particularly
for those women who are barely literate
and who have neither the confidence nor
the collective strength to challenge a
detrimental social system.




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SECTION 4



SAMPDA




Society for Activating, Motivating, and
Promoting Development Alternatives
(SAMPDA)

SAMPDA as a concept and form took shape
the day the Barefoot ideal grew into a
process. This process had, at its very
core, the firm belief that its gainful
growth could only be a truthful one when
and if it gave rise to other such community
initiatives following and believing in
different ideological approaches in
disparate geographical locales.

Presently, 24 organisations, including the
Barefoot College, are members of the society.




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SECTION 5



SAMPDA
OBJECTIVES




Diffusion of knowledge and information,
aiming at activating, motivating and
promoting the causes and welfare of the
rural poor, groups, organisation and
institutes.


To develop areas of cooperation and
understanding among the different
voluntary agencies, organisation,
associations, institutes, groups
and individuals, which are functioning
in India for development of poor,
weaker sections of rural communities.


To educate the member organisations to
develop alternative, innovative, low
cost, methods of integrated rural
developments.


To undertake activities to promote the
innovations and research related to the
integrated rural development.


To work towards creating a platform for
bringing Government, semi-government,
autonomous and other institutes involved
in integrated rural development for
mutual education and exchange of ideas.


To educate grassroot level rural
organisations in rural development.


To initiate debates, discussions and
action on the issues concerning
scheduled castes, scheduled tribes,
women and bonded labourer in the
light of experience of the member
organisations and seek necessary
changes in the policies, strategies,
methods of the government aimed at
equitable distribution of resources
and social justice.


To educate the public on the activities
of its members and further, to start an
information services and to publish
monographs, periodicals, journals,
reviews, papers, pamphlets and other
literature either free of cost or no
profit no loss basis, in furtherance of
the objects of SAMPDA.


To act as a channel of interchange of
experiences and ideas in areas relevant
to the work of SAMPDA.


To arrange seminars, workshops, meetings
and conferences to discuss and study the
problems facing any members of the SAMPDA
and any other problems relevant to the
work of SAMPDA.


To set up training centres, to assist
members in research and evaluation.


To help members with advice and other
areas, in raising funds, and to act as
a liaison between members, government
and donor agencies (national and
international) whenever and wherever
necessary.


To establish contacts with affiliated
or to affiliate with other organisations,
national or international, with similar
objects.


To evolve a code of conduct for the
members and undertake all the necessary
action for its implementations amongst
its members.


To do all such other lawful acts, deeds
and things either alone or in conjunction
with other organisations as are incidental
or conducive to the attainment of the above
objects.


To use traditional and folk media wherever
possible.


To help build up organisation of unorganised
labour and rural artisans.


All activities financed from the funds
shall be conducted in accordance with
the aims and objectives of the SAMPDA
as started herein and no discrimination
shall be permitted on grounds of religion,
caste, creed or sex.

Transparency should exist not only in
financial matters, but also in all
aspects of work.




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SECTION 6



WATER




Preservation and accessibility of water in
poor rural communities, has been of primary
concern to the Barefoot College since its
inception in 1972.

This holds true particularly for communities
that suffer from scarcity of water or are
drought-prone, as well as those that lack
hygienic sanitation and drinking water sources.

The College has been reinventing its methods
as well as methodology, for providing
sustainable community-based water sources,
through time and experience.

Of all the methods that the College has
tried and tested, including long hole
drilling, handpumps and piped water supply,
it has found methods of rain water
harvesting to be the most sustainable and
effective.

Rain Water Harvesting (RWH) is a lost cost
method with maximum benefits. It provides
sweet water for drinking to not only people
but also livestock; both, important criteria
for rural communities that depend on
agriculture and animal husbandry.

RWH helps to replenish or rejuvenate
groundwater tables directly as well as
indirectly.

Collection of rain water has been a
traditional practice through generations
for hundreds of years in remote villages
of Colombia in South America, Atlas
Mountains in West Africa, Himalayas in
Asia, islands in Fiji, as well as deserts
of Rajasthan in India.

The Barefoot College has embraced and
acknowledged the architectural brilliance
in traditional knowledge and skills, of
age-old techniques, to collect or ‘harvest’
rain water in order to meet the needs of
drinking water and sanitation in rural
schools and communities.




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SECTION 7



EDUCATION




The Barefoot College education programme
is geared for overall development of rural
children, and literacy is only a part of it.
It is viewed as a radical departure from
the traditional concept of a ‘college’
because it encourages hands-on or
learning-by-doing process of gaining
knowledge and skills, rather than
imparting it through formal classroom
teachings.

Lessons are focussed on arousing awareness
about the environment and the social-economic
and political forces that dominate development.
Achievement skills that guarantee a sustainable
development in rural communities as well as
literacy are considered important for an
individual’s development.

The aim of the programme is to equip rural
children with the right balance of literacy
and education, so that in the long run each
child voluntarily chooses to stay in the
village and work for its development instead
of looking to move out.




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SECTION 8



HEALTH




The Barefoot College health care section
aims to provide basic health services to
more than 150 villages in five development
blocks of Rajasthan, through a team of
Barefoot doctors, health workers, midwives,
pathologists and dentists with little or
no educational backgrounds.

The College has demystified medical
technologies and decentralised its uses
to equip the grassroot levels with basic
health facilities. Through a network of
the Barefoot health team, Barefoot
communicators and teachers, the Barefoot
College has created health awareness
among rural men, women and children on
issues such as hygiene, food and nutrition,
mother and child care, immunization, oral
health, family planning, HIV/ AIDS,
midwifery, common ailments etc.

The College has been training men and women
from the villages so that rural communities
are less dependent on external aid. Their
involvement in the planning, implementation
and supervision of all programmes have not
only generated employment within rural
communities but also reduced migration.




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SECTION 9



FIVE
PRINCIPLES
OF
BAREFOOT
COLLEGE




Five principles



The Barefoot College is founded
on five principles:


1.Equality:

The program treats all members
as equal, regardless of sex,
class, education, or caste.



2.Collectivity:

Collective decision-making
practiced by one and all.



3.Self reliance:

Members are helped to work
together to develop the
community.



4.Decentralization:

The program is committed
to local decision-making,
and grassroots level.



5.Austerity:

The staff members lead a
simple life committed to
generating a close
community and a stimulating,
creative environment.



BAREFOOT COLLEGE
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/Barefoot_College



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SECTION 10



BAREFOOT
COLLAGE
LINKS




Barefoot College
http://www.barefootcollege.org/

The Barefoot College in Tilonia, Ajmer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjWnzPezWwc

Bunker Roy, Founder, Barefoot College India
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVuI4A1ka6U&feature=player_embedded

Does the Barefoot College apply to your development
http://www.barefootcollege.org/enroll2.htm

Friends of Tilonia Inc.
http://www.tilonia.com

Here Comes The Sun
http://www.outlookindia.com/mad.asp?fodname=20060424&fname=Making&sid=1

Journey
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzFBAcS-mg8&feature=channel

News of the Barefoot Approach around the world
http://www.glinet.org/standard.asp?id=4368

The Rural Women Solar Engineers of Africa
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A450E1QZTY

Sanjit Bunker Roy
http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_03/uk/dossier/txt02.htm

Sierra Leone's First Women Barefoot Solar Engineers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_RT8pngx1A



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SECTION 11



BAREFOOT
COLLAGE
RESOURCES




BAREFOOT COLLEGE
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/Barefoot_College


Community Investing
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Community_Investing


Conscious Business
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Conscious_Business


Grameen Bank
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Grameen_Bank


Isha Foundation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isha_Foundation


Micro-credit
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Micro-credit


Rural development
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Rural_development


Social Accountability International
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Social_Accountability_International


Social Entrepreneurs
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Social_Entrepreneurs


Socially Responsible Investing
http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php?title=Socially_Responsible_Investing




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