LIfetime Achievement in Education Leadership 2014

Sanjit (‘Bunker’) Roy

CITATION

A MERE  80 MINUTES BY ROAD DOWN THE new four-lane NH 8 from Jaipur towards Ajmer is Patan, a small town, the point of departure into the scrub and gravel roads of rural India, one of which leads to the village of Tilonia (pop. 4,000).

In 1972, 25-year-old The Doon School and St. Stephen’s College alumnus Sanjit (‘Bunker’) Roy established the Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC) on an eight-acre barren patch of land in Tilonia. Since then over the past 42 years, SWRC has transformed into the globally — but not nationally — acclaimed Barefoot College (BC), perhaps the only village-based, fully solar electrified community college worldwide.

In essence, BC is a fully-fledged hands-on vocational education and training institution which has adopted and revived rural India’s discarded peer-to-peer learning model with great success.

Today, BC is engaged in training illiterate villagers of both sexes in the practical skills of solar electrification of remote villages, constructing rain water harvesting tanks using traditional wisdom and skills, and running nearly 100 night schools for children who don’t have time to attend day schools. Extending the traditional practice of collecting rain water by adopting it first in the college campus, BC has covered over 1,200 schools collecting nearly 100 million litres of rain water benefitting 500,000 children in primary schools spread over 15 states.

Meanwhile on a contiguous campus, under a unique India Technical Economic Cooperation Programme funded by the Union ministry of external affairs since 1978, illiterate grandmothers from over 64 African and least developed countries are housed and trained over six months using only sign language, to become barefoot women solar engineers by a faculty of 25 BC-trained master trainers. Overall, 600 grandmothers (“they usually have no desire to migrate out of their villages”) have been trained thus far and they have solar electrified over 20,000 homes globally.

To prevent migration and loss of traditional skills, wisdom and knowledge, BC doesn’t award formal diplomas or degrees and doesn’t hire ‘paper qualified’ teachers. Not surprisingly it’s shunned by the academic establishment and ignored by mainstream media. However, the Board of Directors and Editors of EducationWorld are proud and privileged to publicly confer the Lifetime Achievement in Education Leadership 2014 award upon Bunker Roy for reviving and evolving ancient India’s unique peer-to-peer education model to skill and educate millions of neglected  rural citizens and improving their standard of living.