Our City Our Challenge

Enabling youth to demonstrate acts of Active Citizenship

Bala Janaagraha empowers and enables every child to be an active citizen by developing 21^st-century skills. Although our curriculum promotes activity-based and experiential learning, the children and youth also need an opportunity to think beyond symptoms and employ a design thinking approach to problem-solving. Our City Our Challenge is that opportunity! It is a platform for children/youth to become active citizens. They can reimagine and potentially influence the quality of life in their local communities as young change-makers.

Approach

We activate this challenge through a 51 design thinking process in which children/youth: Children/youth can get together and work in teams of 1-5.

Identify an issue
They identify an issue in their neighbourhood that they wish to resolve. The problems can include water conservation, waste management, climate change, education, road safety and COVID-19.

Investigate root causes and symptoms
They research the causes of these issues and why have they continued to exist in their neighbourhoods

Ideate on solution
They come up with singular or multiple ways to address the issues based on the principles of their civic learning lessons

Implement ideas
They put a step-by-step plan into action on the ground

Civic Festival

Months of hard work culminate in a civic festival. The children/youth display their projects as active citizens in their local communities

Volunteer

We are firm believers that you can make a difference! So if you are passionate about building a strong sense of active citizenship amongst children and youth, this is your chance! Visit us at https://volunteering.balajanaagraha.org/ and choose from a range of volunteering roles.