Teaching public problem solving when you can’t be out in public.
How can you make an impact in your community if you can’t even leave your home? Is it possible to be a public problem solver when a pandemic dictates that you avoid public spaces? How does one activate young problem solvers in these unprecedented times?
For seven years now we have made it our mission at Reap Benefit to activate young people into becoming citizen problem solvers in their communities. Our aim is to work with these young people whom we call Solve Ninjas and build their civic muscle.
We do this in a number of ways, one of which is a grassroots level approach where we work directly with schools and teach their students how to become problem solvers through a year long program. Our immersive, hands-on curriculum not only awakens students’ to the impact they can have in their communities by taking civic and environmental actions but also teaches them 21st century skills, which are now widely acknowledged as crucial to their future employability.
However, as far back as March 2020 we realised that the Covid19 pandemic would severerly hamper our ability to work directly with students. So a question we had to answer was, how do we take a year long mentoring program with young people and deliver it to them online in a way that’s as engaging and interesting?
Adapting to Change
“The ability to adapt to change is encoded in the DNA of Reap Benefit,’
- VimalPrabhu, Program Operations, Chennai Team.
“In March we knew that schools would not reopen anytime soon and all sessions would shift online. So we immediately began work on making our Solve Ninja Boot Camp ready for online delivery,” shares Vimal.
Annual training sessions were used to help mentors refresh certain skills, hacks and methodologies and pick up best practices in managing online sessions. Once an overall agenda for the year was in place the team deep dived into detailing each and every session.
Baiju Balan, Thresy James and Tejas Mahajan were the three mentors chosen to run the online Boot Camp along with Vimal. Copious practice sessions were held to help mentors get used to the platforms and develop online facilitation techniques. “It was interesting to see how each mentor developed their own unique style,” shares Vimal who adds that dry runs of sessions helped road test the content created, with feedback from the entire team helping them fine tune the same.
Tejas found the experience of content creation challenging. “From figuring out how we can make the sessions more immersive and interactive and trying to break away from the normal patterns of an online class, to coming up with activities, content and session plans that are engaging and educational at the same time, has been exhausting, frustrating and dare I say fulfilling in often inexplicable ways.” he says honestly.
The Chennai team debuted the online bootcamp with the DAV group of schools who Reap Benefit has been working with for three years now.
Technology as an enabler
Technology has always been a key enabler of our work at Reap Benefit, with our mobile based Solve Ninja App and Neighbourhood Dashboard amplifying local campaigns, local data and local solutions within the network.
A new addition to our tech toolkit was the Solve Ninja Chat Bot which was deployed soon after the online boot camp kicked off.
“Our sessions are planned thematically each month around waste, water, electricity and Covid19. On the chat bot each theme has 5–6 challenges the students can take. If they crack one they move to the next and this allows them to climb up the civic ladder. This also allows them to go deeper into problem solving.” shares Vimal.
Of a total of 2671 DAV Groups of Schools students who have enrolled for the online Boot Camp, almost 50% of them have used and engaged with the Chat Bot.
Turning challenges into opportunities
While adapting modules for online delivery was a challenge, Vimal feels that going online has improved the quality of the content mentors use. “ Before we were following a more traditional chalk and talk methodology, I think our sessions are now more engaging.”
Another limitation was one placed by Covid19. Typically students are encouraged to solve problems first in their home and then step out into their communities to look for issues that need to be solved. However, we realised we needed to find more problems that students could tackle in the home environment. A master list was created and is constantly updated with home based challenges for students.
“We also needed to find ways in which students could take practical actions in their homes that were based on our curriculum. Nudging them to take surveys and audits to collect data, making sense of the data, getting hands on to come up with micro local solutions that have the intended impact. Some of these are still work in progress.” says Tejas.
Students have found myriad problems within their homes. Thirupugazh S from 10th std of DAV Boys School, Gopalapuram took on excessive water usage. He investigated various problems in his house and found the flow rate in his kitchen tap be enormously high (more than 6.5 lts/min) especially for activities like washing dishes. His is now exploring solutions. He also calculated that because of a lack of rain water harvesting facility in his building, the amount of rainfall lost annually was 395520 litres.
Baiju recalls one incident from a discovery session online: “I was asking students what kind of problems they saw around their homes and one of them offered to show a problem right now. He used his phone camera and pointed to a river flowing outside his home in his village where people were mining sand. He talked about how concerned he was about people exploiting the river’s resources. Seeing this, many other students in the class opened up their device cameras and showed problems and what solutions they had thought of to solve them.”
Thresy shares that the team prepared as much as possible with practice sessions, hours of discussion and casual anxiety sharing. Daily online team meets in the evening created a forum for them to discuss the day’s hits and misses. “Learning from each other has helped us get better with each class we take.”
Each of these instances might seem small when studied alone, but imagine if of the 2000 plus students enrolled in our boot camp took 30 actions a month, we’re looking at 60,000 actions. And that’s from just one cohort of schools. And with each problem they investigate and each action they take, these students are learning crucial 21st century skills.
New future, new skills
With numerous restrictions placed on how many hours of online school students can attend, what motivated the DAV Schools to include Boot Camp sessions in an already choc-a-bloc timetable? The educators and school leadership at DAV Group of Schools recognise the importance of the 21st century skills that are core to our curriculum.
Padma Ma’am, Principal of DAV Girls School, Gopalapuram says, “Over the years the Reap Benefit program has enabled our students to develop their problem solving skills. They have learned how to identify existing issues in their surroundings and find ways to bring about an effective solution, where necessary approaching local Governing Bodies. It’s instilled social responsibility at a very young age in our pupils and has moulded them into responsible citizens. It was important to us that the students continue their journey in this area, even in online sessions.”
Shanthy Ashokam, Director of Academics at DAV Group of Schools says that through such experiences students have become more responsible and have learned “to identify and tackle issues; present their learning and showcase the life skills that they have learnt.”
Prakash Babu, Co-ordinator at DAV Boys School, Mogappair says that through the program “children have understood that they can be a part of the solution to problems. Our students don’t just look at the problems around them but at the solution too. Reap Benefit has reinforced our belief that children are capable of finding solutions to issues that are of relevance to them. ”
Mentors send regular updates to teachers at school so that they get a snapshot overview of what the sessions have achieved.
Forging Connections
At a time when they should be out and about, going to school and playing sports, young people across the world find themselves stuck at home, their physical freedom curtailed. While the physical effects of Covid19 have been documented and updated from the start, the effects of social distancing and isolation on mental health is one that is still being studied.
At the same time we also know that people’s connections with their communities, being active in a neighbourhood association, volunteering, or fighting for social justice all have positive outcomes on their health and well-being. We believe that by continuing our work with young people through an online medium, not only are we fostering 21st century skills but also providing them meaningful opportunities to connect with each other and their communities for the benefit of all.
If your school is interested in the Reap Benefit Online Boot Camp reach out to us at communications@reapbenefit.org and a team member will get back to you.
