In Jehane Noujaim's new filmSolar Momas, she follows Indian philanthropist and businessman Sanjit "Bunker" Roy as he travels to some of the world's most impoverished villages on a quest to find local grandmothers he can train as solar engineers. He goes to remote areas of Africa, the Middle East, Central and South America, recruiting women to come to his Barefoot College in Rajasthan, India for a 6-month training program. When they're done, the grandmothers go home with the technology and skills to electrify their villages.Roy claims that grandmothers are the best candidates for this kind of work because, unlike men, they have long attention spans and the desire to stay in their villages to train others and maintain the solar electrical system they've built. Grandmothers, often without any other education or employment prospects, revel in the opportunity to improve the lives of people in their communities.Roy established the Barefoot College in 1972 to teach rural men and women in India how to leverage sustainable technology to improve their villages. He believes people will help themselves when given the opportunity, that reliance on outside systems is often unproductive.At the college the women are taught using sign language and color-coding. Barefoot's solar program shows them how to build units for lighting, heating, cooking and desalination. So far Roy has trained 150 grandmothers from 28 countries, and "solar electrified" 10,000 houses. And that's not to mention the health or environmental benefits of using clean energy alternatives in these villages, according toBarefoot College’s website:"The health effects of burning kerosene, coal and wood are staggering, toxic smokes cause respiratory diseases that kill 1.6 million women and children every year and cause severe respiratory problems for tens of millions. Fixed home lighting units and solar lanterns powered by solar energy can replace kerosene and wood and improve the health of the people as well as the environment."
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As well as documenting Bunker Roy's international adventures, Noujaim's film also focuses on three women from Africa and the Middle East as they travel to India for the program. As Noujaim writes in the film’s synopsis:I would like for it to be an entertaining film about what happens when grandmothers from around the world who have never left their villages gather together for 6 months to learn how to become solar engineers. Secondly, the Barefoot model has proven to be a successful way of achieving the Millennium Development goals from the ground up rather than from the top down. If this film inspires investment in the empowerment of women as individuals to change their lives, and the lives of the people in their villages I will consider it a successful venture.All in all, it’s a fascinating look at the creative, and successful, steps people are taking to revolutionize small-scale infrastructure development. More importantly, those steps are empowering some pretty cool grandmas along the way.