A village solar committee is formed in each of the non-electrified villages selected for electrification. The women solar engineers upon return to their villages set-up a rural electronic workshop (REW) and starts assembling and installing the free solar equipment received from Barefoot College. Every beneficiary household contributes a fixed amount per month to the joint account of the village solar committee. This ensures a regular income for the women solar engineers, money for the renewal of the stock of spare parts and batteries and the operation of the solar committee.
Ongoing Projects:
1. Solar Electrification in 14 Pacific Islands – Supported by the Ministry of External Affairs
The primary aim of this project is to electrify 2800 households from the 14 Pacific Island countries through the women solar engineers who already got trained through the ITEC solar training in India. The secondary aim is to provide livelihood opportunities to the same women by supplying necessary equipment and materials for three selected livelihoods- sanitary napkin making, candle making and mosquito net making. The Ministry of External Affairs finances the purchase of solar and livelihood items, shipment and local transport of the items, electrification of the 2800 households and the monitoring and evaluation of the project.
2. Solar Electrification of 550 households in 8 villages of Hailakandi (Assam), Cachar (Assam) supported by ONGC
The project aims to train 12 rural women from the villages of Hailakandi district of Assam, India and to electrify 550 households after the training. The solar training was conducted in the Sikkim Solar Training Centre of Barefoot College from Dec 2021 to May 2022. They were also provided with awareness sessions on women’s health, leadership building, financial literacy and entrepreneurship skills to build more competence for them to become leaders in the community to help steer positive change on a holistic level. The training, travel, transport and the electrification is fully funded by ONGC.