Solar Mamas Inspires Audience Engagement

Solar Mamas is an inspiring and moving film about Rafea, a beautiful, strong-willed 32-year-old Jordanian mother of four, traveling outside of her village for the first time in order to attend Barefoot College's solar engineering program. India’s Barefoot College, where rural, poor, and often illiterate women from around the world, offers them a rare opportunity to receive an education that teaches them how to make their communities self-reliant and sustainable.

Part of Why Poverty? and Women and Girls Lead, it premiered on Independent Lens and is currently screening nationwide as part of ITVS's Community Cinema screening series. If you missed both of these chances to watch Solar Mamas, it's not too late: it is streaming online at PBS Video. If you are inspired to take action after watching the film, the Community Cinema website is featuring suggested actions you can take to help others like Rafea work towards a greener more prosperous world. Organizations such as SELF, SEED and My Hero Projects concentrate to help those living in poverty, supporting innovative small-scale, and locally driven entrepreneurship.

SELF believes that energy is a human right. Their mission is to design and implement solar energy solutions and give voices to 1.5 billion people living in energy poverty with their economic, educational, health care and agricultural development. SEED acknowledges that supporting social and environmental entrepreneurs around the globe needs to go beyond supporting just a selected handful. MY HERO distributes DVDS, books, equipment, and lesson plans that bring students, teachers and communities together for local, international or online celebrations. Virtual classrooms called Learning Circles allow students to communicate and collaborate, fostering an appreciation for diversity and a sense of global citizenship.