Ajmer, 07 March 2015 – The Philippine Embassy in New Delhi visited seven Filipina women from rural parts of the Philippines who will complete a six-month training this month as solar engineers in Barefoot College in Ajmer District, Jaipur, Rajasthan province of India.

The Filipina participants were part of a group of 34 semi-literate rural women from Bangladesh, Bolivia, Cameroon, Cuba, Ecuador, Lesotho, Myanmar, Malaysia, South Sudan and the Philippines.  The women were selected from remote non-electrified villages to attend the course sponsored by the Indian Ministry of External Affairs under the India Technical Economic Cooperation (ITEC) Programme.  The women were trained to be able to assemble solar-powered equipment, mainly solar lamps, solar-powered cookers and solar-powered water heaters.

The new solar engineers are Arcelyn Dalingay (Kalinga Province), Zenaida Benitez (Bantayan, Cebu), Mildred Baroña (Abra), Sharon Flores (Zambales), Evelyn Clemente (Zambales), Magda Salvador (Tarlac) and Cita Diaz (Tarlac).

The women, or ‘Solar Mamas’ as they are affectionately known, have emphasized their enthusiasm in being able to share their new-found knowledge with their own communities.  They will bring home their own assembled solar-powered lamp and solar panel.  Aside from knowledge transfer, they highlighted that such solar-powered instruments will be very useful to remote villages and to the Philippines as a whole during times of natural calamities.   

Barefoot College is a non-governmental organization founded in 1972 by Sanjit “Bunker” Roy to provide basic services and solutions to problems in rural communities with the objective of making them self-sufficient and sustainable.  The so-called ‘Barefoot Solutions’ can be categorized into the delivery of solar electrification, clean water, education, livelihood development and activism.  Barefoot College has educated women as agents of sustainable change from least developed and developing countries all over the world.