This area has little infrastructure needed for industry to thrive: minimal water resources, almost no power, poor road conditions and no rail or air transportation. No industry has been successful in establishing itself. Rath, the biggest town in the District (similar to a county) of Hamirpur serves as the commerce center for much of the area. However, because of lack of resources and opportunities, those who can afford to, leave for opportunities outside in bigger towns such as Jhansi, Kanpur, Lucknow, and Delhi.

Education for women in this area lags far behind the national average. Higher education for women in Rath is not available locally. Most families do not want to send their daughters to distant towns and hence most young women in Rath do not get an education beyond junior high school. The point of starting this school was to provide women an opportunity to get an education so they can teach or get other jobs locally.

The building for the women’s college was donated and the college has morning sessions for some women. However, because of lack of funds, the building is not finished and the University had not given the college the accreditation it needs. The quality of education far surpasses that provided in other colleges, but the infrastructure is lacking.

Since the electrical grid is not dependable and frequently fails several times each day, the solar energy system provides a dependable source of electricity to run lights for evening classes, and fans to cool the class rooms when the temperature outside is over 100 degrees. Teaching sessions often would be scheduled only in the morning when it was cool, and for about four months it was too hot to have any sessions at all. Evening sessions, when it was cooler, were not possible since it was not possible to guarantee that the lights would stay on.

We installed a 2640 watt solar system and wired in lights and fans for the school while we were there. It was hard work for most of us, but it was definitely worth it.

Written beside the entrance to the college were inspirational quotations about education. One of them was “out of the darkness, walk into light”. We were privileged to help both the students and the teachers to do exactly that: walk into the light. The impact of seeing a brightly lit college in the nighttime darkness of a “village” of 87,000 people is a living metaphor of the impact of a sustainable source of electricity in one town in India.