Presentation on Solar Electrification Project in Nuba Mountains at TEDx Khartoum 2011 Event The presentation gives a narrative of project story and the changing experience of the Barefoot women solar engineers of Sudan.

1. TEDx Khartoum
30 April 2011
The Barefoot Solar Engineers
Doing the impossible ...

2. The End

3. Meeting ... Bunker Roy

Our Keynote Speaker At the International Conference
on Appropriate Technology , Kigali, Rwanda,
November 2008

Described his Barefoot College approach for:

Community partnership

Collective decision making

Learning by doing

A quiet revolution in:

Ethiopia, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Mali, Mauritania,
Cameroon, Rwanda, The Gambia, Benin, Uganda,
Tanzania

5. Achieved by
Barefoot Solar
Engineers
in 2008

6. Meet the Barefoot Solar Engineers

7. The Barefoot College

Founded in 1986 and located in Tilonia, India

Managed by the poor for the poor

Believe that formal education is not a condition to become
an engineer

Focus on illiterate and semi-literate rural women, most are
grandmothers who never left their village
− Practice v Theory … Paper v Community Qualification

Follow Mahatma Gandhi simple life and work style

Their approach has been applied in 13 States in India and a
number of the least developed countries around the world

It simply works!

8. Come to
Sudan!

10. Bunker visited
Community-
based
Organisations
Present at First
Selection Meeting

11. Achieved by
Sudan's First
Barefoot Solar
Engineers
in 2011

12. Suliman Tayara
Association of Small Zeinab Balandia,
Farmers Group Ruya Organisation
Final Selection

13. Off to India March 2009

14. Time to say
goodbye ...

15. Mirri is only
the beginning

16. Ruya Organisation visits Mirri after village selection

17. Settling in …

25. Learning
other skills …

27. Not only were they
learning technical skills
…
They were exposed to
other cultures which
enhances their ability to
be innovators

28. Barefoot Solar Engineers arriving in Khartoum
September 2009

29. Family and Friends
from Ombadda
Karror waiting at the
airport for the
Engineer's arrival

30. There were so
many supporters
that there weren't
enough seats!

31. An emotional home coming

32. While waiting for the
Equipment … producing
chalk, candles, paper
bags...
Sept. 2009 – Sept. 2010

33. Organising exhibitions

34. Equipment arrives (by car,
cart, boat) in Mirri

35. Work started

39. The community was
always curious and
learning from them

40. They are teaching
the community …
which is how the
project can spread to
other parts of the
Sudan

41. Some members
from the
Project Village
Committee that
included a diverse
set of people

42. Filling the batteries

43. Distributing solar
units to each
household

45. Panels are up in Mirri

47. Anxiously waiting
for night to come

50. Think of how much having light will have an
impact on children's education

52. That Moment … Light is on in Mirri
February 2011

53. Next village …
Aldorod Tabaldia

54. Those four innovators have empowered
themselves

55. They are one of the wonders of their
community ...

56. The engineers and those they train can light the whole of rural
Sudan -- if we …

have pro-poor policies and mechanisms in place

learn from and invest in models that work
Although this is a community led/owned project -- we need to …

Thank all who donated to, or facilitated, a step in the project,
but those are too numerous to mention.

Find them on:
http://www.yaarti.net/barefoot/barefootinsudan.html
But most of all -- we need to …
Salute the courage and resilience of those
women...

57. This is really only the beginning …
“First they ignore you, then they
laugh at you, then they fight you
and then you win.”
Mahatma Gandhi