Grannies as solar engineers

This is an inspiring story!

Solar electricity ends such horrors as childbirth by candlelight and long treks to carry stinky, smoky kerosene. With a cellphone and a solar panel, a woman has a business and an emergency communication system. With a solar panel and a laptop, the village has an educational system. Barefoot College has trained women from villages all over Asia and Africa. In 2005, in the case of Afghanistan, Bunker Roy made a concession, allowing the husbands to come with the wives.

“Through sight and sound and sign language, in six months they became solar engineers,” he said. “They went back and solar-electrified the first villages ever in Afghanistan, five of them. To bring ten men and women from Afghanistan, train them for six months, buy 150 solar panels, transport them, insure them and install them in one year is the same cost as one UN consultant sitting for one year in Kabul.” </blockquote>