This particular Ted Talk from Bunker Roy intrigued me from its title, "Learning from a Barefoot Movement", I wasn't too sure what that meant exactly, but it certainly caught my attention. It turns out that Roy is the founder of the Barefoot College in Rajasthan, India. This extraordinary school teaches students, many of which are illiterate, to become solar engineers, doctors, and other important citizens within the villages they come from.
It was very brave of Roy to set off on this journey. When he first started out he left a life of promise behind him and in 1965 he went and set foot in a village. A place filled with starvation and death, when he said, "It changed my life" that is such an understatement. It turned his whole life around, one simple decision to go see what life was like for people growing up in villages opened him up to an entirely different world from the one he had been living in. I have had the privilege to go serve in a village, like what he described, in Mexico with my church during my Spring Break the past two years and their truly are no words to describe what it's like.
When he described the story of going back home and telling his mother that he wanted to go live and work in a village, I know exactly how he felt. I myself have considered becoming a missionary after I graduate, but just like Roy's mother, my parents are not pleased with the idea because they know that I could have such a good life laid out for me here in the states. They want me to follow the normal patterns of society. To get a higher education, get a well paid job, get married, have children, and "live happily ever after". But until they can go serve in a foreign country themselves, I'm not sure that they will ever be able to understand the drive and the passion that I have to do missionary work. I honestly just don't believe that they fully understand why I want to be a missionary and I don't think they ever will until they are able to experience missionary work first hand.
I believe Roy made a wise decision in going back to the village and starting the Barefoot College. He found a balance between his passion for the people there and his degree in Education. He doesn't teach people how to read or write, but teaches them confidence, as described in the story of the 12-year-old prime minister. He solved real world problems providing education to the illiterate, providing food to the hungry, providing electricity for the village, and eve collecting rain water to help the villagers survive drought.
One of the biggest issues we have in America today is our lack of care towards people in foreign countries. I think it has become too easy for us to just put a few dollars in the church offering or to write a small donation to a private organization, but how often do we actually get involved. We often neglect those who are in need of our help and I feel as if we have let down our world. Americas have been gifted with so many resources, but if we are not willing to go overseas and share those resources with the people that are in need, what good have we really done? Our world is in dire need of people who care and are willing to take the kinds of risks that Roy did. We need more people who are willing to throw their promising and secure future away to help a complete stranger in need. We need to be people of compassion.
