RCMI supported Barefoot College founder Bunker Roy gets top US award
India environmentalist Bunker Roy was declared a winner of this year's prestigious 'Clinton Global Citizens Awards'.
Roy is the founder of the Barefoot College, which has been providing solutions to problems in rural communities for more than 40 years.
As a result of Barefoot's work, one million litres of rainwater have been harvested to provide clean drinking water to over 239,000 school children in more than 1,300 communities worldwide. The Barefoot Approach is a proven community-based model, providing basic infrastructure for power and water in remote, rural areas, as part of an integrated solution to alleviating global poverty.
Roy has been named one of the 50 environmentalists who could save the planet by the Guardian and one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine. The model of community-owned, managed, and financially sustained household solar light systems is today replicated in more than 54 countries, empowering more than 600 Women Barefoot Solar Engineers and providing clean energy access to 450,000 people in nearly 1,650 communities throughout India, Africa, Latin America, the Pacific, and Asia.
Barefoot College is a non-governmental organization that has been providing basic services and solutions to problems in rural communities for more than 40 years, with the objective of making them self-sufficient and sustainable. These ‘Barefoot solutions’ can be broadly categorized into the delivery of Solar Electrification, Clean Water, Education, Livelihood Development, and Activism. With a geographic focus on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), we believe strongly in Empowering Women as agents of sustainable change.
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