Chennai students solve community problems from home.
Across the world, organisations, schools and families are finding ways to work, learn and connect with one another digitally and from home given the circumstances created by the Covid19 pandemic.
At Reap Benefit, technology has always been key to the work we do. With uncertainty around when schools will reopen, we have been exploring ways and means in which we can use technology to continue our work with young problem solvers in the months to come.
And so, in April and May we conducted our first ever online summer internship with a cohort of students in Chennai. “We wanted students to engage with problem solving at home, gain new skills and understand the power of civic action.” shared Gauthamraj Elango, Program Operations, Chennai. “62 Solve Ninjas from various branches of DAV Schools in Chennai took part in the online internship.”
The Power of Three
Each Solve Ninja was required to perform a minimum of three out of four tasks. Two tasks were compulsory, and the third was interest based. The tasks are designed to align with the mission of Reap Benefit — to inspire and enable young people to proactively solve problems in their communities.
The first task entailed learning about local government by finding out details of wards, constituencies and administrators. Gokul Aravind from DAV Boys School, Gopalapuram designed a game to test the competency of local administration. If you’d like to play Gokul’s game, click here. (Require sign-in)
The second task was to explore Reap Benefit’s Neighbourhood Dashboard and understand how Solve Ninjas could access and map a diverse set of data points pertaining to the COVID-19 outbreak on it. Vijay from DAV Boys Gopalapuram helped create geo-coordinates from the address of people in need of relief and support which were then marked on the Covid Dashboard. This helped on ground volunteers mobilise supplies to families.
Another core aspect of our work is enabling young people to solve environmental problems. So a task to repurpose old clothes and make reusable bags and masks with them. As a collective and collaborative effort, students from all 6 DAV schools made over 40 cloth bags and 15 face masks. With this effort they diverted about 3 kg of cloth from landfills.
PadBag, an initiative towards eco-friendly and sustainable menstrual products by Amber, Prisha and Preethi from DAV Girls School, Gopalapuram is done with the investigation phase of our problem solving technique DISS, with data collected from 109 people in the community.
Solve Ninjas not only found ways to connect and collaborate with other organisations, but also grow in their own roles. Arjun, an active Solve Ninja Council member would finish his school work by 3pm and then work on his commuity survey till dinner time and even beyond. Seeing the plight of underserved families in his community did not let him rest until he had gathered all relevant details. He also worked with our partner organisation Bhumi to identify people in need in his village and verified them. Through his efforts 90 families were referred to Bhumi and till date 40 families have families have recieved support. He also stepped up to be a Ninja Mentor who mentored students from his school to go through the process of Internship.
Some Solve Ninjas went above and beyond the four tasks by fundraising to support families in need. Dosapati Tejomai and Merrill Shipra from DAV Girls School Gopalapuram and Vashist from DAV Boys School Gopalapuram collectively raised Rs 6000 and were able to extend help to five families.
Reap Benefit mentors Thresy and Baiju who conducted the internship also embarked on a learning curve journey as they tried to coordinate an internship with so many students virtually. “One of our key takeaways was that in order for something like this to work, the students have to be nudged into reflecting and made to understand why this program is important.” they shared.
Solve Ninja Merrill Shipra said “I loved reporting, searching and creating new stuff. The entire journey was an enriching experience. Working on the dashboard led to a completely different surrounding as I attended meetings, helped migrant labourers and became a Covid Ninja!”
Way Forward
The students who completed the internship will be invited to choose their own problem area to work on in the months ahead. Reap Benefit will provide mentoring and support. These students will become a part of their school’s council a model we believe ensures there is sustainability of student efforts in school. Some of the students have already been connected to Solve Ninja Youth Board members to plan ahead.
Just imagine if each Solve Ninja took 3 civic or environmental actions per month that is 30 actions in a year, tremendous from a citizen engagement perspective. Imagine if in every city 10000 citizens took 30 actions. That is 300000 actions! This unlocks huge pressure and can be a starting point towards strengthening the 74th Amendment. #SolveSmallDentBig
