About the BC

THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE, TILONIA THE BAREFOOT The Barefoot College Tilonia The Barefoot College SWRC, Tilonia, 305816 Madanganj, District Ajmer Rajasthan, INDIA tel. + 91 (0)1463 88205 / 88210 fax. + 91 (0)1463 88206 email. [email protected] www.barefootcollege.org The Barefoot College Equality Collective Decision-making Self-reliance Decentralisation THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE, TILONIA THE BAREFOOT Austerity Why Barefoot? • Because millions of poor people in India who carry the knowledge, skills and wisdom of their forefathers live and work barefoot. They sit and work on the floor. • It is symbolic of the recognition, respect and importance we give to the collective knowledge and skill that the poor have. • By calling it ‘barefoot’ we want to give its application a unique category of its own, that is superior, sophisticated and enduring. Far more valuable than any paper qualification. Why College? Because it is a centre with a difference •a centre of learning and unlearning. •where the teacher is the learner and the learner the teacher. •where everyone is expected to keep an open mind, try new and crazy ideas make mistakes and try again. •where only those are welcome who have no paper degree to hide behind. •where only those are considered who are NOT eligible for the lowest government job. •where tremendous value is placed on the dignity of labour, of sharing and on those who are willing to work with their hands. •where no certificates, degrees or diplomas are given. Gandhi & the Barefoot College THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE, TILONIA THE BAREFOOT The Barefoot College has internalized into its lifestyle and work ethics, Gandhian ideas that are still relevant and universal in the 21st Century. Gandhi’s central belief was that the knowledge, skills and wisdom found in villages should be used for their own development before getting skills from outside. The Barefoot College has done this for the last 29 years. Only technology that can be understood and controlled by the community is widely applied and used in a sustainable way to improve the quality of life of the poor. Gandhi believed that sophisticated technology should be used in rural India, but it should be in the hands of and in the control of the poor communities so that they are not dependent or exploited or it leads to replacement. This is what the Barefoot College believes and practices. Thus the technology of solar appliances, hand pumps and computers may be sophisticated but they meet this criteria. Gandhi once said that there is a difference between Literacy and Education. Education is what children receive from the family and the village environment. The night schools were started with this as the central belief. At the Barefoot College everyone is considered an educational resource; the postmaster, keeper of records, the policeman, the nurse, the traditional midwife and the extension worker, all serve as communicators of knowledge in the village. Gandhi believed in the equality of women. The Barefoot College has suceeded in training village women in areas that traditionally men think is their monopoly. Gandhi taught us how not to waste. The Barefoot College recycles waste. Old tyres into swings for children, agricultural waste into handicraft, paper into glove puppets and teaching aids, scrap metal into geodesic domes (minimizing wood as a building material), leaves and grass to produce bio-gas and waste cloth made into rag rugs which are then sold. People’s Power THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE, TILONIA THE BAREFOOT People have always had power. They just need to recognise it. By giving them confidence in their own knowledge and skills the Barefoot College has helped people recognise their power. • The power to ask questions and to demand answers. • The power to decide and choose; to enquire, to hold accountable. •To know how much money is coming into their village, for what purpose and how the money is being spent. No organisation giving money in the name of the poor wants to be transparent and accountable to the poor. Only by adopting the Barefoot approach can you give people power. Otherwise it remains cosmetic and unequal. The Barefoot College organised a the first ever transparency meeting explaining to people where the money for the village came from and how it was spent. Women’s Power THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE, TILONIA THE BAREFOOT The Barefoot College has encouraged women to come together in large groups to realise that they are not alone. By far the most powerful communicators of knowledge and action have been these educated but illiterate rural women who have gained confidence in the fact that they are heard. •Women’s fairs, public hearings and campaigns against rape. • Barefoot women mechanics repairing and maintaining handpumps giving women control over their own water sources. •Woman solar engineers taking on male dominated areas. •Women’s action effecting the first judgement in Rajasthan on minimum wages won in the supreme court ensuring that in times of famine the Government pays minimum wages. • The first public action against rape when scores of women took to the streets - unheard of in traditional conservative Rajasthan. More than 400 rural women produce high quality handicraft for the domestic and export market. The annual turnover is about 100,000 British pounds a year with most of the earnings paid by cheque. They are forced to open their own bank accounts and to learn how to read and write in order to claim their money. 20-25 semiliterate rural women are doing our data input work on computers. 30,000 hours of data entry have been done so far. Women’s Power THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE, TILONIA THE BAREFOOT In 1985 some of us in Rajasthan decided to have a celebration with rural women. It was decided that the Festival should affirm working women’s’ solidarity, focusing on the poor. Women came from all over the country. They spent time talking about their bodies, joys and themselves. They danced together - 1000 of them. In the morning they had an invocation walk and sang songs from different parts of India. There were grass- cutting competitions. They also played men’s games - tug of war, kabaddi and rode bicycles for the first time. They communicated without words about child rearing, labour rates, marriage rites, jewellery and clothes. Despite the wide variety of cultures, languages, food habits, one common thread linked all of them - poverty. The festival was an exchange of ideas but it was mostly an affirmation of love. The political learning that came out of this get together was the deep understanding of atrocities on the female gender. When an old man came for justice and recounted the rape of his 11 year-old daughter it became a real concern because in their own lives they faced this threat every day. For the first time it became a big public issue. The energy of the morning invocation walk got converted to the mass rally that took place in the nearby town of Kishangarh on 4th October 1985. Tractors driven by villagers in support pulled trolleys full of rural women. Everybody wore black bands on their arms and sat in front of the local administrator’s office. A small part of women’s history got written that day. Never in this very traditional and conservative area had so many rural women been seen marching in public and publicly expressing their protest. The Fair was a tremendous expression of women who toil with their hands. A great sense of completion for others who had worked hard to prove that thinking and acting are not mutually exclusive activities. It was also a statement that the personal is political. Women know this without rhetoric. The Night Schools THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE, TILONIA THE BAREFOOT 60% of poor rural children cannot afford to go to government morning schools since they share family tasks like cattle grazing and water collection. This is why schools at night have been started. • For the convenience of the students and not the teachers. The central belief of the Barefoot College when the night schools were started was that • the community, family and village environment are responsible for a child’s education. • school merely teaches one how to read, write and count. • everyone is an educational resource; the postmaster, keeper of records, the policeman, the nurse, the traditional midwife and the extension worker. • they are as important as the teacher as communicators of knowledge in the village. The curriculum of the night schools has been designed to make the rural children more aware of their village - how the rural institutions like post offices, banks, police stations and land records offices work. Today after 29 years there are more than 150 night schools spread over 500 square miles. Over 3,000 children attend them every night. 70% of these night schools use solar lanterns to provide light. Children’s Parliament THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE, TILONIA THE BAREFOOT The concept of the Children’s Parliament is integral to the curriculum at the Night Schools. Children attending the night schools get to know more about political systems and structures by actually going through the learning process. While the parliament monitors supervises and administers the 50 night schools, the cabinet sees that • the teacher comes to school regularly and on time • that the solar lanterns work properly • that there is safe drinking water available • that teaching aids are available and used • that more dropout children attend school. The cabinet has full power to hire or fire teachers and to visit any night school as ministers and report at the next cabinet meeting. Problems have to be solved before the next meeting. All members of parliament are between the ages of 12 to 15.

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