Barefoot College: A rural solution

When Sanjit 'Bunker' Roy started working as an unskilled laborer in Bahar, India during a famine, his mother was a wreck. She viewed his drastic career change from architect to a "nobody" as a waste of time and talent. However, Roy claims it was his first real experience in education even after he attended the prestigious St. Stephen's College in Delhi. When the now 53-year-old created Barefoot College in 1972 his understanding of social service for the greater good was understood. The college operates under the notion that the solutions to rural problems, from natural disaster to lacking education, can be found in those same communities. After Roy's work as a laborer, he saw more clearly how to address the problems associated with finding and cleaning drinking water, educating girls, health and sanitation, unemployment, income generation, electricity and power, and the social awareness of these rural communities with the outside world. But the main purpose of the school is to benefit the poorest of the poor who truly have no where to turn at the end of the day.

The 125,000 student campus sits on 80,000 square feet and is completely solar-electrified. Plus the school was constructed by only two rural laborers, Bhanwar jat, an illiterate farmer from Tilonia and Rafiq a village blacksmith, and their 12-person team over three years. Each student of Roy's is a regular citizen, with the potential for an extraordinary outcome. Roy's method of learning while un-learning opens the door for unprecedented change and option for seeing the world from a different point of view in a non-structured on-the-job environment. And Barefoot schools are now cropping up in more places all over India. For now the school intends to stay active and open, according to their website, "so long as the process leads to the good and welfare of all; so long as problems of discrimination, injustice, exploitation and inequalities are addressed directly or indirectly; so long as the poor, the deprived and the dispossessed feel its a place they can talk, be heard with dignity and respect, be trained and be given the tools and the skills to improve their own lives."

To learn more about Barefoot College, and how to get involved, go to www.barefootcoilege.org