Barefoot College, A Social Enterprise
Comments(0) 
Barefoot College was established in 1972 by an Indian Social Entrepreneur named Bunker Roy. This college is a non-government organization that has been providing basic services and solutions to problems in rural communities, with the objective of making them self-sufficient and sustainable. The College believes the very poor have every right to have access to, control, manage and own the most sophisticated of technologies to improve their own lives. Just because they cannot read and write there is no reason why the very poor cannot have opportunities to be successful.
Some solutions which Barefoot College are trying to establish can be broadly categorized into: education, health care, solar energy, water, rural handicrafts, people’s action, communication, women’s empowerment and wasteland development. Rural men and woman regardless of age, who are barely literate. are being trained to work as school teachers, mid wives, blacksmiths, doctors and many more prestigious jobs.
With little guidance, encouragement and space to grow and exhibit their talent and abilities, people who have been considered “very ordinary” and written off by society, are doing extraordinary things that defy description.
Citation: “2010 Finalist: Barefoot College | The Buckminster Fuller Challenge.” WELCOME | The Buckminster Fuller Challenge. Web. 15 Nov. 2011. <http://challenge.bfi.org/2010Finalist_BarefootCollege>.