Empowering the Rural Poor to Develop Themselves: The Barefoot Approach (Innovations Case Narrative: Barefoot College of Tilonia)

Empowering the rural poor means developing their capacity. It means developing their skills so they become competent decision-makers with the confidence to act on their choices. Thus far, conventional approaches to such empowerment have failed. The approach that big donors and Western-conditioned experts have taken to reach the poor—forget about allowing the poor to develop themselves—has been patronizing, top-down, insensitive, and expensive. It excludes the marginalized, the exploited, and the very poor and keeps them from making decisions on their own. Thus it disempowers them, leaving them dependent and hopelessly ill prepared to improve their lives. Moreover, these “patrons,” however well intentioned, have refused to learn from their mistakes. They are stuck in a rut that wastes money on a process that simply has not worked. But there is another way to empower the poor. It starts with giving the poor the right to decide for themselves how they want to improve their quality of life. They must have the right to choose whether they want the urban experts to come into their villages with “modern” ideas. They must have access to information and knowledge and the right to decide whether they would like to be independent of advice and skills from outside when they already have such incredible technical,