The first thing that surprised everyone was not that Rafea Anadan, an illiterate mother of four daughters, became an engineer. It was that she got on a plane. In her small Bedouin village in Jordan, women rarely travelled alone. They were expected to manage the household, raise children and tend livestock. Schooling for girls often ended early, and engineering belonged to a world so distant it barely seemed imaginable. So when Anadan announced that she was leaving for India to learn solar engineering, many assumed she would return home within days. Instead, she returned as what people would call Jordan’s first female solar engineer.
Her unlikely journey began in Tilonia, a dusty village in Rajasthan’s Ajmer district that has become one of the world’s most unusual classrooms. Here, at Barefoot College, nearly 3,000 women from some of the most remote corners of Africa, Asia and Latin America have learned to assemble solar lanterns, solder circuit boards and install solar panels. Together, they have helped bring light to nearly half a million households, benefiting more than two million people.
The idea dates back to the 1980s, when founder Bunker Roy was grappling with a crucial question: how do you bring electricity to villages where conventional infrastructure cannot reach? The answer, it turned out, was already living there. “Bunker Roy and his colleagues observed that many rural communities possessed deep practical knowledge and skills but were often overlooked because they lacked formal education,” says Sowmya Kidambi, CEO and Director of Barefoot College. “At the same time, they noticed that rural women were usually the most stable members of their communities—less likely to migrate to cities for work and more committed to improving the welfare of their families.”
The initiative was built on three simple ideas: technology should be demystified and made accessible to ordinary people; rural women are among the most effective agents of change; and villages should become self-reliant.
Teaching solar engineering, Kidambi says, turned out to be the easy part. Convincing families that women with little or no formal education could master technical skills was far harder. “There was a widespread belief that engineering and technology were subjects that could only be understood by formally educated men,” she says. “Many people doubted that rural women—especially those who were non-literate or had never attended school—could learn technical skills such as reading circuit diagrams, wiring solar home systems, or troubleshooting electrical faults.”
For women, the transformation often begins the moment they arrive in Tilonia. Many travel outside their countries—or even their villages—for the first time. They step off the bus anxious and uncertain, carrying years of being told that their lack of education defines what they can and cannot do. However, they gain confidence once they are handed tools.
There are no written examinations or intimidating lectures. Instead, they learn by doing: soldering circuit boards, assembling charge controllers, testing batteries and troubleshooting electrical systems. Through repetition, practice and patience, the women who once sat quietly at the back of the room begin explaining technical concepts to one another, diagnosing faults, mentoring newcomers and solving problems independently. “The most striking change is in their confidence and sense of self-worth,” says Kidambi.
When they return home, the transformation is impossible to ignore. Grandmothers once dismissed as “uneducated” are suddenly installing solar systems, repairing equipment and maintaining village energy networks. Younger girls grow up seeing women not just as homemakers but as engineers and problem-solvers. “One of the most meaningful changes is that community perceptions shift from seeing these women as recipients of help to seeing them as experts and leaders,” says Kidambi.
For Barefoot College, that has always been the real achievement. “What makes us most proud is not that these women have learned how to install solar panels or repair charge controllers,” says Kidambi. “It is that they have discovered their own potential and changed the way their communities see them.”
Electricity is the most visible outcome of Barefoot College’s work. The less visible one is however the more lasting: women returning home with the confidence to redefine what their communities believe they can do.