Children/youth are often a neglected yet important stakeholder in today's society. They are not apathetic to the governance system, hopeful of being able to bring out about change, a significant component of the population demographic with the potential to change what a new India looks like. The need to provide them a platform for active participation was felt.
Bala Janaagraha Program was launched by Janaagraha as a pilot effort in Bengaluru in June 2002. The pilot effort covered 170 children spread over 5 schools. Over the last nineteen years, the Bala Janaagraha program has managed to achieve the following milestones.
• 3,80,596 children have experienced high quality activity based civic learning on topical 21st century challenges viz. climate, conservation of resources like Water, Electricity, waste management, Road Safety, urban governance, active citizenship etc.
• 25,600 hyper local challenges identified by children across 800 schools and 26 cities in the country and solved by using a design thinking approach to problem solving.
• 1,200 educators from the existing schooling system have delivered activity based civic learning.
• Over 7000 children across the country have participated in our Annual Civic Fests- a platform for peer learning and information sharing.
Consistent increase in monitoring and evaluation indicators.
Over the last 2 years, thanks to the pandemic, we have made the transition to digital more effectively. The Annual I Change My City Challenge Civic fest run by Janaagraha engaged over 12,000 children in a span of three years. The transition from an onground initiative to a digital platform for the I Change My City Challenge enabled Janaagraha to meaningfully engage 15,000 children in one single year.
Over the next 3-4 years, we want to effectively build a large scale hybrid programme which includes a digital platform focusing on Civic Learning in the country while expanding on our onground work to make it scalable and sustainable while also building on resources, tools that are to be made available to youth/children with no barriers.
Over the last few years, we have attempted to take several aspects of the programme and make them modular for uptake by schools, partners and Governments. During the process of that, we conduct an orientation for the interested team, provide platforms/tools/resources for them to take aspects of the programme in part of in full and deliver the same. We have developed a brief SOP to support process.
