United Nations Radio

Climate change is a global concern.

Solar Panels

But experts say women are more vulnerable than men as they represent the majority of the world's poor and are proportionally more dependent on threatened natural resources. The International Labour Organization (ILO) believes 'green jobs' could play a role in sustainable development while providing decent work for the world's poor. Mandy Cunningham reports on how poor women from India and Africa are being trained as "barefoot solar engineers."

SFX: Children talking in Hindi.

MANDY: Twelve year old Rozaram has not had a great start in life. He lives in a tent in one of the poorest parts of India. His tent stands amid a wasteland of parched scrub. Yet Rozaram says life is actually better now than it was before.

ROZARAM (Hindi): Translation: "He said, now we are very happy because we can eat in the light; before, we ate in the darkness. I can read and write in the light."

MANDY: Rozaram lives in rural Rajasthan. India's electricity grid hasn't made it here yet. For years, Rozaram and his brothers and sisters-with whom he shares the tent-had to manage without power. Then a local woman called Dipsika Vishnava came along...

DIPSIKA (Hindi): Translation: There is a panel outside and from the panel the power comes to the battery.
MANDY: Dipsika shows off a strange looking oblong object strapped to the outside of Rozaram's tent. It's flat...and it's pointing at the sun. This solar panel is enough to give Rozaram and his family an electric light and to charge a mobile phone....

SFX-music

MANDY: ....and his favorite Bollywood music. If the power cuts out, Dipsika can fix it. She's learnt how to install and repair solar panels for families like Rozaram's. She does the same with solar lanterns.

DIPSIKA (Hindi): Translation: I can completely assemble the solar lantern. I can repair the lamp. And I also teach the family how to care the batteries and lantern and everything.

SFX- teaching

MANDY: This is where Dipsika learnt to become a so-called 'barefoot solar engineer'. At Barefoot College in Rajathsan, paper qualifications are unnecessary. Many of the students are illiterate. What matters to this college is finding answers to rural problems from within rural communities themselves. Aisatsoo Bangura is from Sierra Leone in West Africa, one of 40 women students who have come here from Africa. The oldest is a grandmother in her sixties.

AISATSOO: Our people choose me to come here and do solar engineering. So I am happy.

MANDY: As the world's rich wrangle over ways to cut electricity consumption, many, many millions of others are still waiting for electricity to arrive. The issue is how to hook them up without harming the environment on which they depend. Solar power provides one answer because it's all about achieving progress which is environmentally sustainable. It is also provides jobs, for people like Dipsika and Aisatsoo, which do not have a negative effect on the environment. The International Labour Organisation says these so-called 'green jobs' are likely to be vital for the world's poorest people, who are the most affected by climate change. Green jobs will contribute to sustainable economic growth and so help reduce poverty. A key part of the concept of the Barefoot College is to teach skills to students who then spread them around the world from country to country. Aisatsoo Bangura from Sierra Leone says she plans to do just that.

AISATSOO: When I go home, I ask to make a centre, so that we can learn much about solar. Take people from village to village - learn - let them have solar light.

NARR: That report was by Mandy Cunningham for the International Labour Organization.

(duration: 4'17")