Media release

Bengaluru, Feb 11: The third edition of Janaagraha’s annual Bengaluru Civic Fest held in association with Cisco, showcased how Gen Z is taking the initiative to bring change in society.

The one-day fest held at the Bengaluru International Centre, Domlur was a culmination of the IChangeMyCity Challenge run from August 2019 to December 2019, where students were given the task to identify a civic issue that is affecting their neighborhood and come up with an innovative implementable solution to address the same.

“Our partnership with Janaagraha is part of our mission to create the next generation of problem solvers. An active citizenry is a first step towards effective problem solving,” said Murugan Vasudevan, Head- South Asia, Social Innovation Group, Cisco. “By bringing in the power of digital platforms to Janaagraha's work, we hope to be able to accelerate the reach of this program and move us closer to our goal of positively impacting 50M people in India by 2025.”

Over 14,000 students studying in Classes VI to XII across India participated in the Challenge through the IChangeMyCity Challenge portal co-created by Cisco. Twenty-five teams who came up with unique solutions to tackle civic issues that mar Indian cities were shortlisted to present their ideas at the Bengaluru Civic Fest. The students exhibited their projects at individual stalls. This was in addition to over three lac students reached through various other strands of civic learning across India.

The Fest engaged over 2000 students through experiential activities such as composting, fire safety and security drills, learning how to create wealth out of waste and child friendly city inputs, motivating them to spark a civic change. The students also had an opportunity to interact with eminent civic activists such as Srinivas Alavilli co- founder Citizens for Bengaluru, Kuldeep Dantewadia, co-founder Reap Benefit, Preeti Mathur, eminent educator amongst others

The other speakers at the Fest included Joginder Yadav, Director, Legal & General Counsel, India at Cisco, eminent panelists such as Anil Shetty and Varun Agarwal who spoke about ‘Bengaluru@500: Decoding the Decade of Challenges Ahead for Namma Ooru’ and Aaron Mirza who touched upon ‘Rights vs Duties: Young iIndia’s Solutions for the Asian Century’,

The visiting students were seen excitedly discussing with the IChangeMyCity Challenge finalists

on how they addressed the civic issues in their neighborhood. The 25 projects touched upon a range of civic issues like garbage disposal, awareness campaigns, innovative alternatives to resolve common problems, sustainability etc.

“The projects ranged from innovations designed by the students, like the ‘prototype alternate fuel’ made of Acetylene by the students of St Joseph’s Boys High School, which according to them is not just cost effective but cleaner and hence reduces CO2 emissions that pollute environment, to the creation of a working model of a smart irrigation system which aims to reduce water wastage and also save rain water, by the students of Smt Kamala Bai Educational Institution. The students built a sensor which detects water drops and in-turn opens a catchment area which stores rain water. Not just that, unlike traditional irrigation controllers that operate on a preset programmed schedule and timers, this smart irrigation controllers monitor weather, soil conditions, evaporation and plant water use to automatically adjust the watering schedule to actual conditions of the site,” said Prarthana Ramesh, Manager – Civic Learning at Janaagraha.

Meanwhile, students of Srinidhi Public School promoted ‘zero’ waste campus where the students created interesting crafts such as storage and dustbins using waste paper and used the wet waste generated in the school to turn into high quality compost, which is now being used in the school garden.

The finalists also featured young change makers, who identified civic issues and represented the problem to people representatives and civic authorities to get it resolved. Students of Assisi School and Siri School filled potholes on roads around their school and hence prevented mishaps. While students of Delhi Public School Varanasi adopted the Chyavan Rishi Kund neighbourhood and planted more trees and created infrastructure using discarded plastic bottles.

“Civic education or active citizenship education is the only way to solve complex 21st century challenges in a sustainable manner” said Srikanth Viswanathan, CEO Janaagraha. “We need a whole of systems and whole of society approach to solve for complex challenges like climate change, water, sanitation and public health, immigration and jobs, and equity. Active citizenship education seeks to deeply embed skills and competencies of systems thinking, collaborative problem solving and civic leadership”.

Bengaluru Civic Fest is an annual civic convening for school students. The Fest brings together students from different schools to witness the spirit of sustainable citizenship through interactive sessions spread across the day.

Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy (Janaagraha) is a Bengaluru based not-for-profit working towards the mission of transforming quality of life in India’s cities and towns. It defines quality of life as comprising quality of infrastructure and services and quality of citizenship. To achieve its mission, Janaagraha works with citizens to catalyze active citizenship in city neighborhoods and with governments to institute reforms to City-Systems.