These are two of the working buildings at the Barli Vocational Institute for Rural Women in central India.  On the left is the office building for the staff; on the right, classrooms and working area for the girls and women being trained.  You can read here about the training program. 

One of the staff members who lives on the property is running home for lunch, through the double row of mulberry trees and lemon trees.

The volunteers and students live in this building. Vickie will stay here when I'm not in India. The sloped roof on the right is for the solar reflectors, just off-camera to the right, on the roof.  The building was specially constructed for the solar kitchen on the roof.

There are generally several volunteers at any given time, and over the years about 150 people with various skills such as solar cooking, gardening, computers, development, grantwriting, and first aid -- Baha'is and friends of the Faith -- have volunteered for service.  bvirw@sancharnet.in is the institute's e-mail address.  It is funded by various agencies throughout the world, including the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'is of India www.bahaindia.org whose premises it uses.  You can read more about this aspect of Barli here: http://www.monafoundation.org/barli/background.htm

There are many wild peacocks who live on the Barli property; here a peacock and pea-hen are checking one another out through the branches of a banana tree.

Barli grows its own food -- the Indian versions of chickpeas, lentils, and maize, as well as eggplants, bananas, mangos, radishes, mint, green onions, and many kinds of herbs.



This field, generally filled with maize, is presently lying fallow due to the shortage of rainfall, and the drastically lowered water table.  These two portable solar reflectors are used to heat the irons for ironing the fabrics that some of the students make at Barli.. They are aimed away from the building and towards the field, so that no one mistakenly walks into the focal area of the reflectors and gets burned.

The institute curriculum, given on campus and sometimes in villages, includes organic gardening, solar cooking, sewing, batik and block printing for income generation, gender sensitization, the importance of educating the girl child, rural health, women's reproductive health, hygiene, and literacy.  The empowerment of tribal women through the development of leadership skills and an understanding of the vital role women play in society are integral to the Barli curriculum.  In recognition of its outstanding environmental achievement in helping to educate Guinea Worm from 302 villages it was selected for the "Global 500 Roll of Honour" of the United Nations Environmental Programme in 1992.  Since 1994 it has been listed in UNESCO's database as one of 81 successful basic education projects in developing countries.

Jimmy and Janak McGilligan operate the institute, under the direction of an appointed board.  Jimmy is from Northern Ireland; Janak is Indian (a typical Baha'i couple).  Janak holds Bachelors, Masters, and Doctoral degrees in areas as diverse as translation, English, Political Science, Music (sitar), and Development, and has been an invited speaker at women's development conferences at various international venues.  I don't know Jimmy's educational background, but he has knowledge in a broad array of areas, and he can build anything.  He applies all of the technology, and shows others how to use it.  He supervises the fabrication, solar work, gardening, water reclamation, and physical plant, and is a sought-after speaker at sustainable development conferences in India and elsewhere. He is always on the lookout for new ways to bring effective technology into Barli and, through the women he helps educate at Barli, into India's rural village life.





Here, Jimmy is standing next to a Scheffler reflector.  Wolfgang Scheffler http://www.solare-bruecke.org designed this solar cooker.  One remarkable feature is that the mirror is outside, and its rays are aimed so that the cooking can be done inside. More about Barli's solar program is found here.
 


This shows where the sun's rays are aimed by the reflector.  Note the slope of the roof, so that the sun's rays are unimpeded, and their full force can reach the reflector.



Just inside, at the other end of that box where the sun's rays are aimed, these women are using that heat to cook various Indian breads, one of which is similar to a tortilla.  Some are in the basket on the floor.

  

In the same room, this unique device stores solar heat; more details here.  It is made of 400 Kg. (about 900 pounds) of insulated solid steel on a rotatable frame, has its own mirror, and in this way, cooking can be easily done after dark on the hot plate on its top. 



Barli's solar mirrors are kept at the proper angle facing towards the sun, so that the sun's rays are kept concentrated on the various cookers, by means of very simple, and very effective technology using spare bicycle parts.  The energy to move these gears comes from a hunk of concrete attached to a rope (photo immediately below).




Here, one of the women is cooking lunch on an outdoor solar stove; the mirror is off-camera to the left.  Jimmy has just held a piece of newspaper briefly in front of the cooker -- it burst into flame in a second: