Scotland: National Rural Network
Connecting Rural Scotland - Promoting Rural Growth

A double workshop session of the International Rural Network conference held in Udaipur India in August 2009 explored how community owned and managed energy systems could improve rural livelihoods. Training of community engineers in the Barefoot College was a thread that ran through the presentations.

Norwegian Church Aid, Afghanistan

Norwegian Church Aid runs a project in Afghanistan to bring electricity to homes in rural villages that are unlikely to get grid connections. Homes in rural Afghanistan rely on wood for cooking and kerosene lamps for light. They are using the Barefoot approach (more later) to bring solar electricity to these homes. The key to this approach is to get the community to manage and control their own solar systems which include photovoltaic panels, batteries and low energy lights. It provides opportunities to generate income and improve the quality of life.

Working in the communities they identify men and women to become solar engineers. These are trained at the Barefoot College. Back in their communities they are able to put the technical process of fabrication, installation, repair and maintenance of the systems in the hands of the communities. They can establish simple rural electronic workshops and each household pays a small monthly maintenance charge to keep the systems going.

118 rural villages in Afghanistan have been provided with solar electricity by the project. 7800 households have light for 5-6 hours per night and 84 men and women have been trained. This has led to:

• Women being empowered
• Increased possibilities for income generation
• Possibilities for night schools
• Healthier indoor environments (no kerosene lamps)
• Mobiles can be charged

Barefoot Africa

We also heard of a similar approach in Africa although this time the decision was taken to only train women. They find that if they train men that they leave to go to work in the cities whereas the women tend to stay in the villages. They usually pick married women that have a community commitment.

Barefoot College

Finally we heard about AVANI based in Uttaranchal in India. Indian policy is for each household to have 1kw/h of electricity per household per day and provide support for installation costs. However, AVANI found that the solar systems fail where there is no community ownership or maintenance. This, and other issues, led to the development of training courses at the Barefoot College based in Tilonia, India. The college focuses on building to capacity of rural communities to handle their own issues. The college believes that for any rural development activity to be successful and sustainable it must be based in the village and managed and owned by those whom it serves. Therefore, all Barefoot initiatives whether social, political or economic, are planned and implemented by a network of rural men and women who are known as 'Barefoot Professionals'.

 International Rural Network Forum archive.