Becoming Solar Lamp Entrepreneurs: Adult Education among Rural Womenin Indonesia
Ms. Gloria ARLINI (Indonesia)
Children come to mind whenever we talk about education. Educational initiatives
such as Teach For America and its equivalent in Indonesia, Indonesia Mengajar, forexample, groom bright talented recent college graduates to serve for one to two years as
primary school teachers at their countries’ underprivileged schools. Barring somecriticisms, such initiatives are largely welcomed as a great leap forward in molding theminds of the young, our future generations.
But the onus to shape children’s personalities does not lie solely upon schools.
Informal education starts at home, which means that parents—especially mothers—play
an even more significant part in educating their children.
Having a positive role model they can look up to at home is the key to nurturing thehealthy psychological and moral development of young children.
For these reasons, adult education is no less important than child education.
Unfortunately, the former is typically neglected. Adults are assumed to have alreadypassed their learning age and saddled with responsibilities such as making ends meetand childcare, no longer have time nor interest to learn. Adult women are doubly
marginalized, especially in the context of patriarchal societies in Asia and Africa, wherewomen are given a role of homemakers and caregivers—neither of which requires much‘education’.
Besides, in remote villages where resources are scarce and patriarchal values are
not yet diluted by modern and Western ideas of gender equality, and the concept oflifelong learning for rural adult women are practically nonexistent.
But how hungry they are forknowledge! In the past three years,
Nusantara Development Initiatives:
NDI(www.ndi.sg),

thesocialenterprise I cofounded, has beenworking in remote rural areas inIndonesia with no access to electricity.
We aim to end energy poverty bytraining rural women to become solar
lamp entrepreneurs.
We encourage these women toNDI Fellows

start a small business selling good quality environmentally-friendly solar lamps to theircommunities.
These women are housewives aged between 30 and 60 years old with little education.
Some are elderly women who do not know how to write and read very well, others are
divorcees who have to be the sole breadwinner for their families, yet others areenterprising young women who want to try their hands at business. But one thingremains the same: these women have strong desire to learn and broaden their horizons,
especially when we bring new knowledge right to their doorsteps.
“I want to learn,” one fifty-year-old woman said shyly, “when else will I get such an
opportunity, since I am already so old?”
Of course teaching older women demands different pedagogical strategies ascompared to teaching children. To train these women, NDI has developed our own
entrepreneurship module which encompasses product knowledge, communication skills,
marketing skills, sales techniques and book-keeping. As literacy level is relatively basicin these villages, we have to devise creative ways to prepare these materials to engage
the women, such as having less words and more attractive visuals, doing interactive
hands-on activities and playing games, doing sing-along sessions and drama skits.
We also have an out-of-classpractical session, where webring these women out toanother village

to practicedirectly what they have learnt
in the classroom. We encouragethem to apply their newlyacquired

communication,

Solar Lamp

marketing and sales skills tosell the solar lamps to ‘familiar strangers’.
You know what joy is when you see their expressions shown after having successfully
made their very first sale. The apex of the training program is the graduation. This is a
momentous occasion for the women entrepreneurs, who have never been to a graduation
ceremony before—let alone starring in one. Each woman is given a graduation certificate
and a Business-in-a-Bag kit, comprising five lamps as a starter kit. They can thenproudly embark on their journeys as solar lamp entrepreneurs.
Many of us take education for granted, because it is so commonplace where we comefrom. But to these rural middle-aged women, learning means having someone whospends time to guide them, root for them, and believe in them—for the first time in their

lives. And sometimes, that is all they need.
An elderly woman proudly displayed her certificate of graduation and our classphoto in her humble 2mx2m living room. Her youngest son smiled proudly at his mother,a woman who only studied up to Primary 4, as we congratulated her for being our bestperforming entrepreneur.
“I am happy that you came to our village,” she said, “Teach me more, I want to learn
more.”She was 68 years old.