These women, with little or no formal education or literacy, usually between 35 and 50 years old, with no young children, and coming from often impoverished rural areas, go on to assemble, install, repair and maintain solar panels and equipment in their previously non-electrified villages.
The Barefoot College was established in India in 1997 by Bunker Roy and has as one of its goals to educate illiterate women.
The programme links up with many different business partnerships so that the necessary hardware can be shipped to their villages for the women to set up on their return.
[3][4][5] As the women are unused to being in classrooms and yet find themselves in multi lingual, multi-cultural learning groups, the courses use teaching methods such as colour, pictures, gestures, practical experience and sign language to demystify technology and convey the skills required.
[25]” DOÑA LUZ: Stories of Latin American Solar Mamas by Barefoot College and Rodrigo Paris (2020) BLURB Inc ISBN 9781715960711 Parvin Shaikh, Neda (2024) "Feminism in Practice: Learning from the Barefoot “Solar Mamas”," Journal of International Women's Studies: Vol.