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Approach ‘Barefoot Professionals’ are none other than
the rural women and men who work at the Barefoot College. Even though most of
them have little or no educational qualifications, they are working and
committed to improving the quality of life of underprivileged, neglected and
exploited people. They work under no written contract which makes them all
volunteers. They are free to stay for as long as they like, many have stayed for
as long as 20 years! No one at the College earns more than $150 a month and the
difference between the highest and lowest paid is in not more than 1:2. Everyone
in the college receives a living wage, not a market wage. Living conditions are
simple so that they feel comfortable. Everyone sits, eats and works on the
floor.
There is a spiritual dimension in the College because working relationships
depend totally on mutual trust, tolerance, patience, compassion, equality and
generosity. The College and its members are publicly accountable and all
decisions are transparent and collectively taken. All people in the college are
equal regardless of gender, caste, ethnicity, age, and schooling.
The criteria for selection are simple, only men and women, young or old who are
illiterate, semiliterate, or barely literate and who have no hope of getting the
lowest government job. They are trained as barefoot teachers, night school
teachers, doctors, midwives, dentists, health workers, solar engineers, solar
cooker engineers, water drillers, hand pump mechanics, architects, artisans,
designers, masons, communicators, water testers, computer programmers and
accountants. Thousands have passed through the college without a certificate in
their hands and are productive responsible members of rural society.
It deliberately confers no degrees, with a view to reversing migration. The
certification is provided by the community itself. If one can improve the
quality of life in one’s community by providing a vital service, why would
anyone want to live an unspeakably miserable existence in the urban slums? The
employment generated by Barefoot College has checked and indeed reversed
mass-scale migration to far off cities and nearby towns in search of wage labour.
The Barefoot College demystifies and decentralises sophisticated technology by
handing its control to poor communities in rural India. It believes that even
the poorest of poor cannot be denied the right to use, manage and own technology
to improve their own lives. The aim has been to develop the capacity and
competence of communities to take decisions and responsibilities and improve
their management capabilities. The Barefoot College enhances their
self-confidence by providing them access to learning to harness their ability to
serve their own community, thus making them more confidently self-reliant.
The Barefoot College encourages a hands-on learning-by-doing process of gaining
practical knowledge and skills rather than written tests and paper based
qualifications. It promotes and strengthens the kind of education one absorbs
from family, community, and personal experience. It applies the knowledge and
skills that the poor already possess for their own development thus making them
independent and letting them live with self respect and dignity. Very ordinary
people written off by society are doing extraordinary things that defy
description. Therefore, Barefoot College is a radical departure from the
traditional concept of a “college”.
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