{"id":8395,"key":"Barefoot_professional","title":"Barefoot professional","latest":{"id":1206700,"timestamp":"2025-11-27T20:40:30Z"},"content_model":"wikitext","license":{"url":"https://www.appropedia.org/Appropedia:Copyrights","title":"CC-BY-SA-4.0"},"source":"Expressions such as '''barefoot doctor'''{{W|barefoot doctor}} (a concept originating in China in around 1965) and more recently (but more rarely) '''barefoot architect''', '''barefoot engineer''' and similar terms refer to professionals in the [[majority world]] who live in, and generally originate from, the culture that they are serving.\n\nThis approach can be contrasted with much of [[foreign aid]], which involves highly paid consultants from the developed world, who often do not know the language or culture well, if at all.\n\nThe Chinese program of barefoot doctors ended officially in 1981, replaced with a system of doctors and village health aides.\n\nIn 2003 Bunker Roy, the founder of the Barefoot College, Rajasthan, [[India]], won the St Andrews Prize for the Environment{{W|St Andrews Prize for the Environment}} for bringing solar energy to remote Himalayan villages, using \"barefoot engineers\".\n\n== External links ==\n\n* [http://web.archive.org/web/20150113022859/http://www.worldchanging.com:80/archives/002289.html Walking Barefoot With Gandhi] ''WorldChanging.com, March 26, 2007'' - about the Barefoot College.\n* [http://web.archive.org/web/20150101002324/http://www.worldchanging.com:80/archives/006369.html The Barefoot Approach Beyond India] ''WorldChanging.com, March 26, 2007''\n* [http://web.archive.org/web/20180709084411/http://ecolecon.missouri.edu:80/globalresearch/chapters/2-17.html Research for Planetary-Learning Management - Strategies for poverty reduction] - includes several references to barefoot practitioners of nursing and other skills.\n\n{{Page data\n| license = CC-BY-SA-3.0\n}}\n\n[[Category:Principles of development]]"}