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June 5, 2008
A Social Entrepreneur
With Barack Obama’s hard-fought victory in a historic Democratic nominating process, the inevitable scramble for the Clinton voting bloc ensued. Both candidates, McCain and Obama, rightly reflected on Senator Hillary Clinton’s determined push for the Presidency. McCain said that as a father of three daughters, he was thrilled to have such a visible role model competing for America’s toughest job. Perhaps he was thinking about Gandhi’s comment, “To call women the weaker sex is a libel. It is man’s injustice to women. If by strength is meant moral power, then women are immeasurably men’s superior. If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women.” How to train the next generation of female leaders? Try this model from India.
Bunker Roy was raised in the most upscale neighborhood in Delhi. After university, he informed his mother that he intended to move to the countryside, to live with the poor rural people, to dig irrigation wells. Mr. Roy initiated night schools for young girls. According to the Nike Foundation, girls in developing countries work about six hours a day gathering wood, fetching water and tending cattle, while boys work only forty five minutes because they are going to school. Mr. Roy, who visited Edelman’s offices in New York this week, told our employees that his program has educated 100,000 girls in the past thirty years. Mr. Roy presents compelling data on his students, showing delayed marriage, lower fertility rate and better performance by next generation females. The night school children elect a representative council, including a prime minister who traveled to Stockholm to receive an award from the Queen of Sweden. When the Queen asked how this young woman, who had never been outside of her village, had such confidence, she told Mr. Roy to tell the Queen, “Because I am the Prime Minister.”
He started the Barefoot College in 1972 to train “the poorest of the poor.” He pioneered the use of solar power to electrify entire villages. His favorite solar engineers are “grandmothers in their mid 50s, because they are dependable, not liable to leave the village, and committed to the job.” Professional skills enable the women to cross traditional gender barriers; according to Mr. Roy, a grandmother told the local men that she had to stay for the planning meeting because her expertise as a solar engineer was required. The other key resource is water; in Rajasthan, there are periods of up to six years when there is zero rainfall. Mr. Roy has built the roofs of his schools to double as rainwater collection sources; the sealing of the roof is done in private by the women, who use a mixture of clay and their own urine to waterproof the facility. Schools collect enough from a single rainfall to be self sufficient for six months.
Mr. Roy gave up a promising career in business to work with young women. He did so with the conviction that he could make a difference through social entrepreneurship. In a world of constrained resources, we in the West have much to learn from the women of India, in their effective use of water and solar. He sums up his approach by quoting Gandhi -- "I live simply so others can simply live."
Please share your stories with me of others who are contributing in this manner.
Posted by Edelman at June 5, 2008 2:24 PM
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