Tilonia’s Solar Sisters

In a village in Rajasthan, illiterate African women are being taught to become solar engineers

Africa, the dark continent, is forging a special relationship with the sun, thanks to a college in the Indian village of Tilonia. For four years now, Barefoot College in the Ajmer district of Rajasthan has been training rural, illiterate women across Africa to become solar engineers. And this year, the Solar Sisters of Tilonia are among the 12 finalists for the World Challenge, an annual international competition to reward grassroots-level projects that sparkle with innovation. And given that the awards are presented in association with the BBC and Newsweek magazine, they are bound to get a lot of international press. The winner will be announced on 5 December at the Hague in the Netherlands.

Barefoot College was set up in 1972 on the philosophy that the solutions to rural problems lie within the community itself. The 80,000 sq ft campus itself is completely powered by solar energy.

Over the last four years, the Solar Sisters project has trained more than 100 women from Kenya, Ghana, Niger, Cameroon and Mauritania over six-month courses. And electrified 6,000 houses in 70 villages in 15 countries. More amazing is the fact that most of the women are illiterate and don’t speak English. Much of the training is through sign language. “Where is it written that just because you cannot read or write, you cannot be a solar engineer?” asks Bunker Roy, founder of the college. “By recognising that illiterate rural grandmothers in Africa can solar electrify their own villages, the Solar Sisters project has demonstrated that the impossible is possible.”

You can hear the chuckle in trainer Bhagwat Nandan’s voice even over the phone when you ask him how difficult (or easy) it was to communicate with the African students. “Actually, we spent the first month orienting ourselves to each other. Gradually, we’d start laughing at the same things. In classes, we follow a ‘learn by doing and do by learning’ model. Plus, we have manuals with instructions in English on one side and pictures on the other. So it wasn’t so tough really,” he says. “And through it all, there was the bond of food. We taught them how to cook dal chawal on solar cookers. And they fed us their food. I particularly remember the ataya tea from Timbuktu. It was so bitter.”

The women have to sign a contract saying that on their return, they would install solar units in their villages and maintain and repair them for five years. “Many of them are still in touch with us. Sometimes, they call at midnight to tell us about their progress. I haven’t heard one story which isn’t a success,” says Nandan, the pride evident in his voice. But the irrepressible Roy is not satisfied yet. Next he wants to take the project to Latin America. “We had three women from Bolivia with us in 2007. Now is the time to take the project forward,” he says.

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Sohini Chattopadhyay