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Enriche - The whole programme is run to empower women,in various parts of India.
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Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. As a
McKinsey study highlights, fully closing gender gaps would add $28 trillion to annual GDP in 2025.
The Enriche program supports women’s aspiration to transform themselves and their communities. It
provides them with the opportunity to embark on an empowerment journey; a journey to gain the confidence,
skills and knowledge they need to reach their full potential as agents of sustainable change and to support
their entrepreneurial aspirations.
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Other education (Vocational/ technical schools)
Adult/ continuing education
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ENHANCE: Awareness & Aspirations
ENABLE: sustainable livelihoods
ENGAGE: Communities and Local Partners
ESTABLISH: Resilient Change Agents
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ENHANCE!
90% of participants gained essential knowledge and skills to better manage their financial
resources and to improve their health.
“I liked what I learned about banking. I will open a bank account and tell other women that they need to
get the deposit slip signed and stamped by the bank official every time.” Pista Bai, Rajasthan, India
ENABLE
3 Social Enterprises launched to support rural women livelihoods throughout the value chain:
B.Barefoot Honey, Coffee and Amritchuran Nutritional Supplement.
“The income from the Honey sold will help us improve our lives, pay for our children’s education and our
health care.”
Mwanatuko O thman Ali, Mtende village, Zanzibar
ENGAGE
Participants said they are committed to share the skills and knowledge they gained with an
average of 150 people in their communities.
“I will share with my community that we must not differentiate between our girls and boys. We should send
our girl child to school and take care of her health as well. I will spread the knowledge I gained from Enriche
in my village.”
Suraj Kanwar, Rajasthan
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Education
Enterprise
and
Empowerment
by and for Rural Women
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Solar Electrification of Remote Villages in various parts of India
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Such an innovative community-based approach has been successfully tried in India since 2000. Under this approach, Barefoot College with the affiliation of Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) has demonstrated the effective application of solar energy particularly in the rural areas. The CBOs have also pioneered the concept of women barefoot solar engineers working as energy entrepreneurs in remote villages. This approach would involve community level capacity building in installation and maintenance of RE systems through a network of rural electricity workshops (REW) and trained women barefoot engineers at the grassroots level globally.
• They provide community-based expertise and train poor village illiterate women in assembling complete solar photovoltaic (PV) systems.
• This successful barefoot approach experience in India could be replicated in rural areas around the world. However, for community managed systems to work and be effective, the specific roles and responsibilities of the stakeholders have to be clearly identified. The pilot project has been demonstrated the role of non-conventional, RE as a vital means for poverty reduction and creation of sustainable livelihoods among low income communities in remote rural areas over 50,000 rural families in 70 least developed countries in the last decade.
• Sustainable human development will be achieved by building local capacities within the community to set up, operate, repair and maintain solar PV generating systems to meet local needs. Solar energy not only provides an appropriate solution for heating, cooking and lighting in rural areas but also contributes significantly to progress in education, health, agriculture, rural industry and other income-generation activities that would result in poverty reduction. The opportunity for lighting provided by solar energy can be used to run literacy and other courses in the evening that would benefit children and adults working in the fields during the day.
• Solar energy programs will also promote the empowerment of women by training illiterate and semi-literate women to become barefoot engineers who could install, operate, maintain and repair solar energy systems, and by freeing them from walking long distances to collect fuelwood and reduced health hazards associated with the indoor burning of firewood. The use of solar energy will also be instrumental in reducing environmental pollution and degradation by reducing the use of fuelwood, diesel, and coal. Community-based ownership and management of the solar energy systems will ensure full participation of local people in all aspects of decision making including design and implementation. In particular, disabled persons who are generally marginalized could be associated with the initiative
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• Solar energy is considered the most important rural energy (RE) source. Consequently, there is a huge potential for solar energy development, not only solar water heaters for homes, hospitals, and buildings but also for generating electricity.
• In the current international climate of awareness of global warming and other environmental detriment caused by imprudent energy use, the time is right to develop a cohesive program to extend RE to rural communities that have little or no prospect of grid electrification.
• Solar energy technologies have been demonstrated successfully. There are, however, few examples where the provision of alternative energy has directly resulted in tangible and measurable improvement in the income of poor communities in any significant scale. Some of the apparent reasons for this are: (i) high initial costs of technology that is not affordable by the poor; (ii) limited number of locally relevant productive applications suitable for alternative energy; (iii) limited or no access of the poor communities to the supply markets; (iv) absence of efficient technology service providers and suitable projects in remote areas that could be bankable through financial institutions; and (v) lack of support from the central energy ministries, as their mandate is energy provision and not income generation for the poor. In view of this, it would be appropriate to develop innovative and decentralized approaches to poverty reduction through harnessing solar energy.
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Broadly, the project aims at the following:
• Bring light in the lives of people, by replacing kerosene lanterns with solar lighting devices,
• Facilitate education of children,
• Provide better illumination and kerosene smoke-free indoor environment for women to do household work and
• Provide better livelihood opportunities.
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Solar powered Digital Night Schools for quality primary education to 2000+ marginalised children in
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Evolving from 40 years experience of running hugely successful night schools for 75,000+ children, the Barefoot Solar Digital Night School model is a complete solution for quality digital non-formal education for remote off-grid underprivileged communities. Aiming to teach literacy, numeracy, scientific skills, environmental sustainability and democratic values, our curriculum is piloted in our model rural school, Shikshaniketan, and then customized for the low-resource night schools where children aged 6-14 years gather at night to learn by the light of solar lantern from Barefoot trained community teachers. Our model is a direct response to the 2015 SDG goal “Quality Education for All” that includes:
1. Edu-box Solar projector, tablets & offline media
2. A locally customized curriculum with a pro-girl rural STEAM approach
3. Teachers training that demystifies technology and builds teachers from grassroots
4. M&E module which remotely tracks every child’s learning through offline sync
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To positively and significantly impact the education of a million children through more than 3,500 schools in remote off-grid underprivileged communities across the planet.
To ensure that our learners actively partake in an interconnected opinion forum to evolve viewpoints on gender, environment and rights issues and thereafter translate their views into positive social action.
To create capacity of 7,000 night school community teachers, majority women, creating empowered grassroots role models pushing the society towards a new normal.
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To be an effective scalable solution for quality digital education for the last mile anywhere in the world beyond barriers of energy access, connectivity or pedagogical capacity in remote underprivileged communities.
To nurture our learners to become creative, introspecting, confident individuals with a tolerant view towards diversity, pride towards their heritage, equipped to be leaders of the future with academic, vocational and other capabilities to be able to make positive sustainable choices.
To create future Barefoot leaders empowered to steer and advance the development of their own communities both in terms of night school students and teachers.
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