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Sanjana talks about the annual civic project organized by Bala-Janaagraha that aims to provide a platform for children to share their ideas on civic issues and put into practice all that they have been taught through the academic year.   

At Bala Janaagraha, we aim at building active citizens who are thoughtful and aware of the issues in their communities. More importantly, we try to develop a sense of ownership and responsibility towards their communities in our young participants. But we don’t just stop there. We believe in the potential of young people to affect change, and the first step is to have us, the adults and decision makers, listen to their thoughts and ideas.

Thus, the idea of the ‘Civic Project’ was born. Like everything we do at Bala Janaagraha, the civic project aims to inform, involve and engage the children in the exploration of civic issues directly related to their community and neighborhood and if possible propose an innovative, simple and practical solution. We train our young citizens in critically analyzing issues in their neighborhoods and support them as they take concrete action towards solving those issues. This year, we chose the theme of ‘Solid Waste Management’ and gave our participants the option to choose from a variety of topics: E-waste, Plastic Waste, Construction waste/Debris, Household waste, Medical waste, Packaging Waste and Paper waste.

But it doesn’t end there! While the children dived into the civic project, we at Bala Janaagraha were determined to provide them a platform where they could share their ideas, explore the scope of their projects and celebrate together the effort that everyone had put in. And so we had ‘What Rubbish! – the Bala Janaagraha Civic Fest’.  

Organised on the February 12, 2011, we had teams coming in from 44 schools to present the work that they had done. We also had 20 judges, all from a strong background in Solid Waste Management, to listen to the projects, evaluate them, and offer suggestions on how they can take these projects forward. We had students who had visited more than eighty households, collecting data, some students had interviewed corporators of the various wards on the issue of Solid Waste Management. Others had done skits and role plays in their communities to spread awareness on the issue. Our judges were extremely happy with the work put in and have expressed interest in implementing the ideas suggested by the children.

Teams of children from various schools enacted skits on Solid Waste Management

Besides this, we encouraged our children to unleash their creativity! Each school came with a number of projects made out of scrap – from jewellery to wallets to chandeliers to a motorized vacuum cleaner; there were no limits to their creativity!

  A child investigating a periscope made as one of the creative projects

We also organised two art events – a collage and an art activity, where children were given 10 items of waste (from matchsticks to old cloth and crepe paper) and asked to create a painting from it.

Finally, we had a ‘Me and My City’ quiz where our young participants enjoyed demonstrating their knowledge about the city of Bangalore.

The greatest joy was in seeing so many of our schools winning prizes. Our old Bala Janaagraha partner schools did a fantastic job as expected. However, we were overjoyed at seeing some of our new partner schools, particularly those which haven’t competed before, taking away top prizes as well. At the end, every one left the venue feeling happy and satisfied at a job well done – the children flush with enthusiasm for taking their projects forward and us for being able to provide them with a platform to do exactly that.

     A team which won the Best Civic Project

- Sanjana Janardhanan

Curriculam Associate, Bala Janaagraha

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