Tilonia, Rajasthan

The Barefoot College located in the village, Tilonia in district Ajmer of Rajasthan state has been working with rural communities for 40 years with a focus on cost-effective and self-sustainable Barefoot solutions. The college runs many centres, including healthcare centres, 150 night schools, livelihood centres, field centres for multiple activities, rural craft training centres, and so on. Across India, Barefoot College has 24 centres covering across 18 schools and all of them run by solar energy. The Tilonia centre of Barefoot College covers more than 250 villages over a 400 square kilometres area.

DEF has already implemented Internet connectivity at the main Barefoot College Campus, but other field centres and 150 night schools have not been connected to the Internet. In order to connect these centres, Barefoot College launched the Community Radio Station, but this only caters for voice transmission.

Implementation of a wider wireless network at Tilonia will provide seamless connectivity at these centres. The Internet connectivity will also help children of night school to explore the world through usage of Internet.

As a matter infrastructure availability, at Barefoot College’s Field Centers and many of the 150 Night Schools, they all run on Solar enabled energy and all the field centers also have computers for their internal operations and for training purposes. However, for the Night Schools, although they do not have permanent computers at each of the schools, the College uses portable computers cum laptops for occasional exposure to ICT and for training purposes.