Media Release
Bengaluru, Aug 12: From e-waste recycling to promoting gender-inclusive society, at Bala Janaagraha’s ‘Our City Our Challenge’ project OCOC over 1691 students showcase ideation, innovation, technology to answer tomorrow's challenges to society in a sustainable manner.
In connection with E-Waste Management, K Gorakshith Rao and Kuberan A, students of Maithry Vidyanikethan, Bengaluru made it their mission to inform people of the dangers of careless disposal of e-waste and through their project stopped 97 kgs of e-waste from entering the landfill. The duo started collecting e-waste from their friends, acquaintances. They even approached the school principal who loved the idea and extended support. In just 34 days, they managed to collect 97 kgs of e-waste, which would have otherwise ended up in the landfill along with other household waste. They approached NGO Sahaas for guidance and support.
“E-waste contains toxins that can pollute soil, water, disrupt the eco-system and affect one’s health. We need to speak on the dangers of careless disposal. Awareness is the key,” says the duo who are pursuing their 6th Grade.
Teams created prototype models to solve real-life civic challenges. They approached authorities to get their ideas approved and implemented. For instance, Bluebell Public school, Bengaluru designed an Automatic Waste Segregation Bin. The prototype segregates wet waste and dry waste, by identifying the moisture content. “This bin helps in effective waste management, wherein 100% dry waste goes into recycling. Wet waste could be turned into compost, reducing waste going into landfills due to improper waste disposal systems,” says team lead Allen Christ. The team also received an appreciation letter from the BBMP for their prototype, and they have promised to patent it and start using it as part of their waste management system.
The students between 10 and 16 years were participants of the 4th edition of Bala Janaagraha’s ‘Our City Our Challenge’ project. They came together as teams and attempted to solve real-life civic challenges, ranging from e-waste management to gender inclusion. They interacted with thousands of citizens, community leaders, government officials to understand problems in their neighbourhood and designed practical solutions.
On the other hand, Gen Z are also strong advocates of gender inclusivity. The team from Delhi Public School, Varanasi, led by Pranav Donapathy, focused on issues faced by the LGBTQ+ community and did their best to address them. The team saw many students in their school and in their community being bullied and called slurs, owing to a lack of awareness, misinformation about the LGBTQ+ community. They viewed these encounters as morally unacceptable and aimed to help the community and many others silently suffering the abuse. To address the issue, they carried out extensive research on the origins of homophobia and transphobia in India and identified the reasons behind the same.
Following this, they conducted a webinar to spread awareness and present their findings to their fellow students, teachers & parents. They concluded the exercise by conducting interviews to assess the general opinion and perceptions about the LGBTQ+ community. In a collective effort, the 1600 plus participants of Bala Janaagraha’s ‘Our City Our Challenge’ interacted with over 50,000 citizens to understand their grievances and concerns, including community leaders and 184 local governance officials. “For our cities to be safe, inclusive and sustainable, they need to be child friendly. Further, children and youth in India's cities need to be engaged on civic matters for developing all round leadership in any career they choose. Janaagraha is committed to further expanding our city our challenge in the coming years as an important step towards child friendly cities,” said Srikanth Viswanathan, CEO, Janaagraha
“The pandemic has demonstrated the importance of citizen participation and active citizenship. These youth have overcome numerous obstacles and displayed enormous hope and potential for the future of this country. Each project is unique, persistent, and showcases innovative and sustainable solutions across the various themes,” said Prarthana Ramesh, Head, Bala Janaagraha.
About Our City Our Challenge The 4th edition of Our City Our Challenge this year was launched on November 23, 2020. Students between grades 6-12 were given time till April 15, 2021, to plan and execute projects. The students were asked to work on topics such as Road Safety, Climate Change, Local Governance, Water Conservation, Waste Management, COVID-19 issues, or any other issue to bring about a positive impact. With the guidance from their teachers and mentors from Bala Janaagraha constantly following up with the progress, the challenge received interesting entries.
Students submitted their projects through https://challenge.balajanaagraha.org/, a portal designed exclusively for OCOC. The project submissions led to a three-level evaluation process, thereby shortlisting 39 winners and 27 runners-up for this year.
The maximum submissions were received from Bengaluru (844) followed by Ahmedabad and Madurai.
The Top 5 Topics Chosen
The youth across the country acted on the issues either as an innovator, an influencer, a systems thinker, or as a hands-on explorer and provided some exciting and sustainable solutions. The top five topics chosen by the students were – waste management (194 projects), road safety (179), water conservation (171), COVID-19 awareness (127) and climate change (67)
About Bala Janaagraha
Since its launch in 2002, the Bala Janaagraha programme has engaged over 4, 11,000 students across grades 6th – 8th in 700+ schools in 29 cities. The programme design and construct have been planned to enable skills such as critical thinking and reasoning capacities, collaboration, multidisciplinary thinking, deliberation, and bridge-building among others. While the content promotes activity-based and experiential learning, the civic project activity aims to make children think beyond symptoms and about root causes, engage with their local communities and feel empowered to be a changemaker while also building in students critical skills for their future.