Reap Benefit - Updates Threead

[Sukriti]

1. Overall updates (since the last update)

Hello everyone!

This is the first update from Reap Benefit on Grove.

We are on a mission to enable 1 million citizens to engage in civic & environmental problem solving in their local communities to reshape citizen participation & strengthen local self governance by 2025. In this endeavour, we are building and growing the Solve Ninja Movement of young everyday leaders who can mobilize ownership of their street, city, country; one act at a time.

In the last eight years, we have activated 50k + Solve Ninjas, who have taken 94k + civic actions, started 3143 campaigns and built 552 civic innovations to address local environment and civic issues across the country. This has saved 54.3 million litres of water, 1.7 million units of electricity and diverted 187 tonnes of waste from landfills.

2. Progress on the goals listed while on-boarding

Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator: We kicked off the third cohort of our Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator program (previously called Civic Leader Incubator) in July. 22 enterprising individuals (14 of them are women leaders) from Guwahati, Kanpur, Hosur, Patiala and Faridkot among other places are a part of the program. They are either working on strengthening their social enterprises or building solutions for the problem statements they have been working on. Solving the solid waste segregation issues in Kanpur, village development plans, inclusive and accessible education for underserved children are a few problem statements the participants are working on. To see how the program has been designed, click here.

Solve Ninja Technology Platform: The platform (comprising the WhatsApp chatbot, IVRS, Neighbourhood Dashboard and WebApp) provides an easy to use interface that allows citizens to access data that can inform their participation in local environment and civic issues. It also allows them to input hyper-local data from their local communities, hence bridging the information gap, building community ownership of data and solutions, and making data more accessible to end stakeholders. We have initiated work to integrate the different tools across our technology platform. We have more than 68k registered users on the chatbot who have exchanged 1.16 million+ messages. We also have local elected representatives across India testing our Solve Ninja chatbot to engage with citizens in their constituencies

Playbooks: We have initiated a few experiments to use our civic-technology tools to create playbooks to provide citizens support as they take civic and environmental actions in their local communities.

Fixing blackspots using behaviour science nudges to clean and maintain garbage blackspots for 100 days

Call Your Representative to build a culture of calling and holding elected representatives accountable

Mapping Primary Health Care Centres Realizing the need for equitable immunization and healthcare delivery, we launched #ownyourPHC campaign that allowed crowdsourcing of 136 PHC audit responses and 255 citizen feedback on PHC/vaccine centres through our technology tools from various districts across India

3. Any challenges

Communication has been our Achilles heel and we are struggling to share our learnings and failures consistently to the larger community. Movement building needs focussed communication as a way to galvanise citizens to start owning their streets, neighbourhoods and cities.

4. Any new avenues of collaboration (with other Grantees of RCF or other NPO/NGO)

We have initiated conversations and partnered with organizations across various thematics- environment and climate change, local governance and 21st century life skills.

1. MASS (Mahila Abhivrudhi Mattu Samrakshana Samsthe)- Belgaum, i-Saksham - Bihar, Sanjhe Sapne- Himachal Pradesh : implementing youth programs on environmental and civic problem solving in local communities
2. Non-profit organizations alliance through GAME : Project aimed at building 21st century skills and entrepreneurial mindset
3. Initiated conversations with Centre for Wildlife Studies, Water For People, CORO, Buzz Women, Kaivalya Education Foundation, Desh Apnayen Foundation among others to build momentum around civic and environmental problem solving through youth action and leadership

5. Highlights from the initiatives being undertaken as part of your organization

Citizens driving government action: In collaboration with Indus Action and Bangalore Apartment Federation, citizens across the city made applications for 1,359 domestic workers via our WhatsApp chatbot to get COVID compensation by the government. In a powerful display of active citizenry, more than 16 lakh rupees will be sanctioned.

Solve Ninja Community Initiatives: In our bid to accelerate our mission, Solve Ninjas have started or will start creating communities across Karnataka (Bangalore, Hubli, Belgaum, Nelamangala), Tamil Nadu ( Chennai, Cuddalore), Punjab, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh. These Solve Ninjas have also experimented with communities around Local Policy (discussions, ideas around 73rd and 74th amendment and local climate) and Local Solutions ( to build and implement ideas to solve local issues ).

6. Outcomes you are chasing for the next 6 months (these can remain the same if unchanged since the last update)

The outcomes we are chasing for the next 6 months (till March 2022) remain the same

7. KPIs (please use this section to let us know of the impact and reach of your work since the last update)

This is our first update.

8. Can Rainmatter be of help with anything at all

1. Requesting connections with someone in the team who has worked on Grove. We have built the Solve Ninja forum with an aim to:

• Mention local circulars and policies around the environment and civic issues ( city/village wise and someday even locality wise)
• Mention all the best practices by citizens across the country
• Have features like polls, ratings, etc; so that citizens can engage as well

2. Nudge Expert: Our Solve Ninja Chatbot is approaching 100,000 users from different parts of the country ( Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, AP). The chatbot is currently being used by youth citizens from the age of ( 13-25) and also elected representatives to improve citizen engagement around local issues across the country. We are looking for someone, who can help us devise and execute nudge-based behaviour communication to motivate youth and citizens to take the small environment and civic actions in their neighbourhood.

9. Any additional details you would like to provide

We have been recognized by the World Economic Forum as one of India’s Top 50 COVID-19 last mile responders. Our COVID relief work focussed on the underserved communities, and followed a decentralized approach through our citizen network and open technology tools (WhatsApp chatbot,dashboard and IVRS). It allowed us to bring together civil society organizations, citizens and governance systems to facilitate COVID relief work for more than 11.6 lakh people. During the second wave, we enabled delivery of 10,00 masks,102 Oxygen cylinders, 200 oximeters and 89 ration kits across Karnataka, Odisha, Assam, Nagaland. We were pivotal in the creation of COVID Bed Task Force, which allowed 20 non-profits in Bangalore to collaborate towards addressing duplication of bed requests in hospitals by centralizing request data and decentralizing fulfilment. More than 300 such requests were addressed in a span of two months. We initiated the #ownyourPHC campaign to crowdsource information regarding public health centres and their readiness in providing COVID relief support. We crowdsourced 136 PHC audit responses and 255 citizen feedback on PHC/vaccine centres through our technology tools from various districts across India. Highlighting our work, The Times of India published an article on the state of PHCs in Karnataka. We are also researching and collating COVID relief related best practices on the Solve Ninja Forum and are now working towards developing India’s first disaster management stack that allows a comprehensive mapping of vulnerable areas in specific geographies and innovating scalable delivery models to enable efficient relief support during future pandemic situations.

10. Please also share any images or videos that you have documented as part of your work

The first session for the third cohort of Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator in progress

[Mari]

Thanks Sukriti - this is wonderful!

[Sukriti]

1. Overall updates (since the last update)

Hello everyone!

Solve Ninja Movement is a unique hyperlocal grassroots movement addressing civic and climate change at a neighbourhood/community level. Using a combination of civic technology and grassroots mobilisation, we identify, nurture and sustain grassroots leaders to combat civic and climate change with tools of local data, local solutions and local community. Our aim is to activate 10 million action-oriented citizens by 2030 to engage in civic and climate action.

In the last nine years, 112,018 Solve Ninjas across 12 states in India have taken 94k+ actions, crowdsourced 5.6 lakh data points, started 3143 campaigns & built 552 solutions - saving 54.3 million litres of water, 1.7 million units of electricity & 187 tonnes of waste. There are 13 Solve Ninja communities with 300+ Solve Ninjas across Bangalore, Nelmangala, Dharwad, Amritsar, Patiala, Bihar among others.

With our ideology rooted in action, in the last three months we have worked towards strengthening our programs, partnering with organisations with similar values and ethos, and bolstering our tech capabilities to support citizens in mobilising ownership of their local neighbourhoods.

2. Progress on the goals listed while on-boarding

Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator

Program Summary: Enterprising youth (between 18-24 years of age) who either have a deep interest or a demonstrated history of engaging in climate and civic public problem solving are taken on an immersive, hands-on leadership program to help them scale or provide depth to their innovations.

For the current cohort, we received a total of 86 applications from 15 states in the country-Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. 25 participants were selected for this cohort- 52% are women leaders and 44% are from rural communities. From climate change activists to TFI Fellow to social entrepreneurs to technologists to aspiring parliamentarians, the cohort participants are working on a range of problems from climate change to unauthorised waste dumping to women rights in low income communities to youth leadership in governance to unsustainable farming methods.

Cohort participants and their problem statements:

1. Intending to use technology to fight climate change, Aditya Dubey is creating a prototype called Carbon X to meet global targets of removing 2GT CO2 annually by 2050. He’s joined the program to connect with mentors, network with non-profits - both national and global and get access to capital to test and scale Carbon X
2. Addressing the lack of knowledge regarding menstruation and prevalence of various taboos associated with it, Vishal S from Bangalore is working on making content accessible online and via sessions for schools.
3. From Phulwara in Punjab, Ranveer Singh aims to be a community leader in his village. From installing valves to reduce water leakages, engaging in cleanliness drives on a monthly basis, and addressing the village water works problems affecting 1200 people , Ranveer is an aspiring social entrepreneur

The current cohort has given the program an NPS of 75-positively acknowledging the mentor support provided and access to problem solving tools and resources that enabled the participants to be innovative and scale/deepen their impact .

Learning from the program

At programmatic level

There are five important levers to enabling youth in engaging in climate and civic action in their local communities. These are:

1. Network of local mentors: To support youth discover, investigate, research existing solutions or build and implement new ones among community members. Each participant has a vertical and horizontal mentor. Constant checking ins and following up through WhatsApp has built a strong change of communication between mentors and Solve Ninjas- they are able to reach their mentor and peers, share their work and clarify doubts as and when needed

• List item

Given that most participants are aspiring entrepreneurs, Abhimannue Sreekishan, Program Director: Communications, at Reap Benefit took a special session on effective communication and storytelling to enable the participants in using different mediums, channels and strategies to communicate effectively and efficiently

2. Knowledge Toolkits and Solutions: To enable more and more youth to take problem solving actions in their communities, we have developed 38 playbooks across five different thematic areas- waste, water, sanitation, energy and citizenship. Used during program implementation, we are also looking to disseminate these through the WhatsApp chatbot.

3. Peer Community: To help them learn from local action takers and collaborate with other like minded individuals to create task forces to address local issues

• List item

In the run up to Environment day, we organised an AMA (Ask me Anything) with Mr. Tarun Bothra, Co-Founder of Saathi Pads. He shared his experience of building a social enterprise in India and his perspectives on the circular economy. A highly engaging session, the participants found motivation and bonded over the lived experiences of civic and public problem solving with Tarun

• List item

AMA with Social Entrepreneur Develeena Bhattachrjee. She has been a seasoned Data Scientist/ Space Data Enthusiast - Building a Sustainable, Traceable and Climate Resilient Fisheries Ecosystem providing fishing data to 5000 + fishing men/women communities across India. (Numer8.in and N8ofish.com). The participants found her journey inspiring as an entrepreneur, stumbling on climate change interventions while she was working with governments both in India and Sri Lanka on providing data from space on ocean currents quite fascinating. Some takeaways from her session:

-Invest a lot of time with the community to develop meaningful interventions. Develeena had spent a lot of time with the fishing community of Sindhudurg, she did a lot of empathy interviewing with women in the community to know their behaviour responses to icons for the app development
-To develop services and products keeping the 4 Ps of People, Planet, Purpose and Profit
-The discipling to constantly whiteboard for prototyping for solving emerging needs build on a daily practice of visiting the vision board
-Calling out the economic value to sustain engagement with communities. Most impact does play out into economic value - education leads to skilling leads to access to opportunities - leading to decrease in poverty

4. Consistent behaviour nudges: Through grassroots engagement and technology, behaviour nudges are initiated with the youth to trigger civic and climate actions. For example, Reap Benefit, given the youth target group, adopts a gamified approach to initiate action. Confirmation bias through success of civic solutions builds the consistency of actions being taken by the users.

5. Access to local data: Through the Solve Ninja platform comprising the Solve Ninja chatbot, City Dashboard, Knowledge Forum and IVRS

Strengthen RB technology capacities to each citizens and communities across different geographies, enable collaboration and informed decision making on climate change mitigation

The open civic platform - including the WhatsApp chatbot, City Dashboard and Knowledge Forum is aiding citizens across different parts of the country in flexing their civic muscle and solving civic and public problems in their local communities.

The Solve Ninja chatbot has 75K+ registered users who have exchanged around 2.3 lakh messages with the chatbot. For the chatbot to be a true running mate for citizens in civic and climate problem solving, we realised the answer lied in leveraging behaviour science to understand social norms. It is more than getting a grip on usage and behaviour; it is about understanding the cultural, gender or temporal norms citizens ascribe or aspire to. In this regard, we have experimented quite a bit.

• Humanisation of the chatbot- fancy as it may sound, the focus has been on giving the chatbot an affable personality for user affinity, ensuring consistency in the tonality of the messages and using the chatbot as a member of the community
  -We have created 20 geography based collections on the chatbot- sharing targeted geography based local nudges and broadcasts about problems, campaigns and solutions

From an average engagement rate of 20%, we are now seeing the citizen engagement with chatbot to increase to 47%!!!

In a successful attempt to get more and more citizens to interact with the chatbot and take problem solving actions in their local communities, we have been able to integrate IVRS and chatbot. For our partnership with The Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi to engage 3 lakh citizens in environmental and civic problem solving in their local communities through the Paryavaran Mitra initiative, one can simply give a missed call to 8448441758 and start getting nudges, knowledge and toolkits to take action.

Strengthen communities of adolescents and youth across different regions on environment and climate change mitigation themes like solutions, policy, technology, training etc

Playing a pivotal and exponential role in strengthening the Solve Ninja Movement, communities (now called Yuva Cabinets) are creating a platform for the youth to come together to engage in environmental and climate problem solving.

We started building communities last year with the intention of providing the adolescents and youth who go through our programs an avenue to continue engaging in environment and climate problem solving and also get more youth engaged in the same. We tried to stay in regular touch and also use the Solve Ninja chatbot to send regular nudges to support them in taking problem solving actions, but we found it challenging to sustain their engagement over a long period of time. Communicating the why and what of a community also deterred their growth and continuity. While community and movement building may seem organic, learning best practices from organisations who have cracked it brings to notice certain nuances that are important from the point of view of building momentum and sustainability - structure, reward mechanisms, targeted communications.

Incorporating these learnings, each Yuva Cabinet:

• has a President and Vice President
  -eligible for rewards - monetary and material rewards to motivate and sustain them in the movement
• has access to mentor support
• Will conduct hyper-local events in their communities to address local environmental and climate challenges; getting more and more youth to join the movement

Currently, there are are 7 Yuva Cabinets across Karnataka and Punjab with 105 members

Create playbooks with behaviour nudges on themes around environment and climate change

In our endeavour to enable more and more citizens to take problem solving actions in their local communities, we are working towards building a nationwide repository of citizen led solutions and nudges. Designed on principles of shared value creation, enabling agency and amplifying actions, 38 such playbooks are ready on the themes of: Water, Sanitation, Waste Management, Energy and Citizenship. These will now be made available on our website and Solve Ninja Forum, and also disseminated via our Chatbot.

3. Any challenges

Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator

1. The changing COVID guidelines and transitions from online to offline and vice versa put a roadblock on program design and delivery. The current cohort got delayed by 4 months because of the last COVID wave in the country
2. While the small seed fund provides an avenue for the participants to work on their problem statements, finding funding beyond the cohort is still a challenge for most participants
3. Building and running organisations is not an easy task, but it gets even difficult in the non-profit sector. Since getting investors is a challenge, the youth with their ideas and solutions might find it difficult to continue sustaining their vision

Building Communities

1. The youth have been a part of various communities in the past- tied to deliverables and commitments. It is taking some time to build their trust and engage them in actions that will have a positive impact on their communities
2. Behaviour change and getting citizens, in general, to understand climate change and its effects is difficult. People expect policy changes and solutions, but small measures do have the power to dent big.

Building technology tools to engage citizens across different geographies, enable collaboration and informed decision making

1. The users engaging on the chatbot range from 11-60 years of age. Designing customised engagement strategies for different age groups across different languages has been a bit of a challenge
2. Most users got onboarded on the chatbot via certain keywords or social intermediaries like teachers, mentors, Yuva Cabinet presidents etc. Getting the masses to engage with the platform needed a shift in thinking. The IVRS to chatbot integration has solved that challenge for us and reduced the dependency on social intermediaries to get people on board

4. Any new avenues of collaboration (with other Grantees of RCF or other NPO/NGO)

-Collaboration with Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi (DDCD): As part of Delhi Government’s commitment to building a sustainable, equitable and modern Delhi by 2047, Reap Benefit will be co-creating the concept of Mohalla Paryavaran Mitra initiative. In the next three years, using the Solve Ninja technology platform, we are looking to engage 3 lakh citizens and youth in civic and environmental issues in their neighbourhoods

• Deshbhakti Curriculum with the Education Department of Government of NCT, Delhi: Targeted at 4.5 lakh students this year, Reap Benefit, through its problem solving ideology, toolkits and events will be integrating a practical, action-oriented methodology to the Deshbhakti curriculum. It has been designed to instil a sense of responsibility and duty towards the country with an intent to enable children to take small steps towards solving issues in their local communities
  -Entrepreneurial Mindset Curriculum with Education Department, Andhra Pradesh government: A 30 school pilot conducted last year is now being scaled up to reach 300 schools (4.5 lakh students) across the state. With Global Alliance of Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) as the lead partner, Udhyam Learning Foundation, Reap Benefit, Maker Ghat and Aflatoun International will be contributing as implementing partners to deliver the curriculum
  -Project Based Learning with Kaivalya Education Foundation in Jhunjunu, Rajasthan: After a 100 school intervention on a five day water conservation challenge and a bootcamp program on 0 Plastic Waste project, the partnership is moving forward this year towards scale. 1500 students will go through the five day challenge through the Department of Education and 7000+ Grade 6-8 adolescents across 100+ schools in Jhunjunu are building their problem solving skills and becoming active citizens in their communities by engaging in community waste management projects
  -Mission Innovation Mysuru: Reap Benefit has signed a three year MoU with the University of Mysore to collaborate for its Mission Innovation Mysuru program to help build skills and enable future entrepreneurs to have the knowledge and skills to thrive in the evolving global economy. The students will be a part of Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator program
  -Collaborating with Hume Centre to make an online platform for data collection , visualisation and public reporting aspects for their programs on citizen climate connect. To see the link- click here - wayanad.solveninja.org

5. Highlights from the initiatives being undertaken as part of your organisation

-We recently constituted a new governance board for Reap Benefit. With Preeti Sawhney, as our chairperson, we welcomed Kailash Nadh (CTO, Zerodha), Shreyasi Singh (Co-founder,Harappa Education), Maria Clara Pinheiro (Senior Advisor, Ashoka) and Veerendra Mishra (Indian Police Service, Madhya Pradesh) to the board. Given their vast and varied experiences, we are looking forward to working with them in taking the Solve Ninja movement forward.
-Org Capacity Building: 50% leadership comprises grassroots mentors who have risen the ranks. The core team includes a significant number of individuals who are first generation learners and represent mega cities and villages at the same time. From this year onwards, we are creating a dedicated budget and space to create learning opportunities for different team members to learn skills, mindsets and knowledge that will help them in their core role and towards their goals. Team members have been attending courses by the Takshashila Workshop, ISD She Represents, Education Cohort by Glific, Engage and Enable Workshop by Kshetra, No Coders Builder Workshop among others
-Given the mission we are on, we are engaging with Sahayog Foundation to help us design our partnership strategy and connect with like minded organisations in taking the work forward. They are also supporting us in assessing our financial model and how we further strengthen it to deliver at scale. With 10 team members going through the Engage and Evolve Workshops by Kshetra, we are hopeful of building the partnership muscle in the team
-We are undertaking a research study with Aapti Institute to understand the enablers and barriers for youth in civic and public problem solving. Spread across Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu- the preliminary research has surfaced interesting insights into how youth are using technology and approaching problem solving across rural and urban settings. It is also opening pathways towards using the framework to build youth capacities towards addressing issues across different thematics such as climate, health, education among others.

6. Outcomes you are chasing for the next 6 months (these can remain the same if unchanged since the last update)

We are on track to:

1. Engage youth in the Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator. We have partnered with Mysore University to
2. Organise events like Solvathon, Climate Olympiad
3. Build 10 regional communities (Yuva Cabinets) across the country to engage in environmental and climate actions in the communities
4. Reach out and collaborate with non-profit organisations to building sustainable ecosystems in rural neighbourhoods
5. Organise and invite partners for a once year knowledge sharing event
6. Strengthen Reap Benefit technology capacities to reach citizens and communities across different geographies, enable collaboration and informed decision making on climate change mitigation- we will continue to reach new users, increase the engagement rate via the chatbot. The focus in Q2 and Q3 will be on rolling out the DIY marketplace and building a city based dashboard with climate change indicators for at least 1 more city. The integration of chatbot and dashboard is a focus area for Q2. We are also building an open city tech stack-the word press for civic environment issues

7. KPIs (please use this section to let us know of the impact and reach of your work since the last update)

1. 6 change leaders are completing their 6 month journey as a part of the Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator
2. 7 Yuva Cabinets across Karnataka and Punjab engaging 98 youth in environmental and climate problem solving. 2 persona based communities on Solutions and Policy to build youth momentum and enable action
3. The Solve Ninja chatbot has 75k+ registered users with more than 2.3 million interactions and an average interaction rate of 20% which has now increased to 47% post our experiments with behaviour science. There are City based dashboards with crowdsourced climate change indicators for 5 cities- Bangalore, chennai, Amritsar, Patiala and Wayanad
4. We are partnering with the Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi to co-create the concept of Paryavaran Mitra initiative to engage 3 lakh citizens in environmental and civic problem solving, Education Department of Govt. of Delhi to implement the Deshbhakti curriculum to engage students in action-oriented problem solving, education department of Andhra Pradesh government to implement Entrepreneurial Mindset Curriculum in collaboration with GAME, Udhyam Learning Foundation, Maker Ghat and Aflatoun. We are also partnering with Kaivalya Education Foundation to implement project based learning projects with ~6000 students in Jhunjunu, with Kick-Off Solutions to build leadership capabilities in adolescent and youth girls from tribal communities across Jharkhand, Pondicherry among other places.

8. Can Rainmatter be of help with anything at all

1. Connecting us with grassroots organisations, welfare associations, corporates in Delhi to accelerate citizen engagement.

9. Any additional details you would like to provide

NA

10. Please also share any images or videos that you have documented as part of your work

Gadag Yuva Cabinet organised a meeting with 60 MGNREGA workers to get together to start addressing the lack of water and other issues in their village.

[Sukriti]

1. Overall updates (since the last update)

Hello everyone!

Solve Ninja Movement is a unique hyperlocal grassroots movement addressing civic and climate change at a neighbourhood/community level. Using a combination of civic technology and grassroots mobilisation, we identify, nurture and sustain grassroots leaders to combat civic and climate change with tools of local data, local solutions and local community. Our aim is to activate 10 million action-oriented citizens by 2030 to engage in civic and climate action.

In the last nine years, 112,018 Solve Ninjas across 12 states in India have taken 94k+ actions, crowdsourced 5.6 lakh data points, started 3143 campaigns & built 552 solutions - saving 54.3 million litres of water, 1.7 million units of electricity & 187 tonnes of waste. There are 13 Solve Ninja communities with 300+ Solve Ninjas across Bangalore, Nelmangala, Dharwad, Amritsar, Patiala, Bihar among others.

With our ideology rooted in action, in the last three months we have worked towards strengthening our programs, partnering with organisations with similar values and ethos, and bolstering our tech capabilities to support citizens in mobilising ownership of their local neighbourhoods.

2. Progress on the goals listed while on-boarding

Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator

Program Summary: Enterprising youth (between 18-24 years of age) who either have a deep interest or a demonstrated history of engaging in climate and civic public problem solving are taken on an immersive, hands-on leadership program to help them scale or provide depth to their innovations.

For the current cohort, we received a total of 86 applications from 15 states in the country-Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. 25 participants were selected for this cohort- 52% are women leaders and 44% are from rural communities. From climate change activists to TFI Fellow to social entrepreneurs to technologists to aspiring parliamentarians, the cohort participants are working on a range of problems from climate change to unauthorised waste dumping to women rights in low income communities to youth leadership in governance to unsustainable farming methods.

Cohort participants and their problem statements:

-Intending to use technology to fight climate change, Aditya Dubey is creating a prototype called Carbon X to meet global targets of removing 2GT CO2 annually by 2050. He’s joined the program to connect with mentors, network with non-profits - both national and global and get access to capital to test and scale Carbon X
-Addressing the lack of knowledge regarding menstruation and prevalence of various taboos associated with it, Vishal S from Bangalore is working on making content accessible online and via sessions for schools.
-From Phulwara in Punjab, Ranveer Singh aims to be a community leader in his village. From installing valves to reduce water leakages, engaging in cleanliness drives on a monthly basis, and addressing the village water works problems affecting 1200 people , Ranveer is an aspiring social entrepreneur

The current cohort has given the program an NPS of 75-positively acknowledging the mentor support provided and access to problem solving tools and resources that enabled the participants to be innovative and scale/deepen their impact .

Learning from the program

There are five important levers to enabling youth in engaging in climate and civic action in their local communities. These are:

a. Network of local mentors: To support youth discover, investigate, research existing solutions or build and implement new ones among community members. Each participant has a vertical and horizontal mentor. Constant checking ins and following up through WhatsApp has built a strong change of communication between mentors and Solve Ninjas- they are able to reach their mentor and peers, share their work and clarify doubts as and when needed

-Given that most participants are aspiring entrepreneurs, Abhimannue Sreekishan, Program Director: Communications, at Reap Benefit took a special session on effective communication and storytelling to enable the participants in using different mediums, channels and strategies to communicate effectively and efficiently

b. Knowledge Toolkits and Solutions: To enable more and more youth to take problem solving actions in their communities, we have developed 38 playbooks across five different thematic areas- waste, water, sanitation, energy and citizenship. Used during program implementation, we are also looking to disseminate these through the WhatsApp chatbot.
c. Peer Community: To help them learn from local action takers and collaborate with other like minded individuals to create task forces to address local issues

-In the run up to Environment day, we organised an AMA (Ask me Anything) with Mr. Tarun Bothra, Co-Founder of Saathi Pads. He shared his experience of building a social enterprise in India and his perspectives on the circular economy. A highly engaging session, the participants found motivation and bonded over the lived experiences of civic and public problem solving with Tarun

-AMA with Social Entrepreneur Develeena Bhattachrjee. She has been a seasoned Data Scientist/ Space Data Enthusiast - Building a Sustainable, Traceable and Climate Resilient Fisheries Ecosystem providing fishing data to 5000 + fishing men/women communities across India. The participants found her journey inspiring as an entrepreneur, stumbling on climate change interventions while she was working with governments both in India and Sri Lanka on providing data from space on ocean currents quite fascinating.
d. Consistent behaviour nudges: Through grassroots engagement and technology, behaviour nudges are initiated with the youth to trigger civic and climate actions. For example, Reap Benefit, given the youth target group, adopts a gamified approach to initiate action. Confirmation bias through success of civic solutions builds the consistency of actions being taken by the users.

e. Access to local data: Through the Solve Ninja platform comprising the Solve Ninja chatbot, City Dashboard, Knowledge Forum and IVRS

Strengthen RB technology capacities to each citizens and communities across different geographies, enable collaboration and informed decision making on climate change mitigation

The open civic platform - including the WhatsApp chatbot, City Dashboard and Knowledge Forum is aiding citizens across different parts of the country in flexing their civic muscle and solving civic and public problems in their local communities.

The Solve Ninja chatbot has 75K+ registered users who have exchanged around 2.3 lakh messages with the chatbot. For the chatbot to be a true running mate for citizens in civic and climate problem solving, we realised the answer lied in leveraging behaviour science to understand social norms. It is more than getting a grip on usage and behaviour; it is about understanding the cultural, gender or temporal norms citizens ascribe or aspire to. In this regard, we have experimented quite a bit.

• Humanisation of the chatbot- fancy as it may sound, the focus has been on giving the chatbot an affable personality for user affinity, ensuring consistency in the tonality of the messages and using the chatbot as a member of the community
  -We have created 20 geography based collections on the chatbot- sharing targeted geography based local nudges and broadcasts about problems, campaigns and solutions

From an average engagement rate of 20%, we are now seeing the citizen engagement with chatbot to increase to 47%!!!

In a successful attempt to get more and more citizens to interact with the chatbot and take problem solving actions in their local communities, we have been able to integrate IVRS and chatbot. For our partnership with The Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi to engage 3 lakh citizens in environmental and civic problem solving in their local communities through the Paryavaran Mitra initiative, one can simply give a missed call to 8448441758 and start getting nudges, knowledge and toolkits to take action.

Strengthen communities of adolescents and youth across different regions on environment and climate change mitigation themes like solutions, policy, technology, training etc

Playing a pivotal and exponential role in strengthening the Solve Ninja Movement, communities (now called Yuva Cabinets) are creating a platform for the youth to come together to engage in environmental and climate problem solving.

We started building communities last year with the intention of providing the adolescents and youth who go through our programs an avenue to continue engaging in environment and climate problem solving and also get more youth engaged in the same. We tried to stay in regular touch and also use the Solve Ninja chatbot to send regular nudges to support them in taking problem solving actions, but we found it challenging to sustain their engagement over a long period of time. Communicating the why and what of a community also deterred their growth and continuity. While community and movement building may seem organic, learning best practices from organisations who have cracked it brings to notice certain nuances that are important from the point of view of building momentum and sustainability - structure, reward mechanisms, targeted communications.

Incorporating these learnings, each Yuva Cabinet:

• has a President and Vice President
  -eligible for rewards - monetary and material rewards to motivate and sustain them in the movement
• has access to mentor support
• Will conduct hyper-local events in their communities to address local environmental and climate challenges; getting more and more youth to join the movement

Currently, there are are 7 Yuva Cabinets across Karnataka and Punjab with 105 members

Create playbooks with behaviour nudges on themes around environment and climate change

In our endeavour to enable more and more citizens to take problem solving actions in their local communities, we are working towards building a nationwide repository of citizen led solutions and nudges. Designed on principles of shared value creation, enabling agency and amplifying actions, 38 such playbooks are ready on the themes of: Water, Sanitation, Waste Management, Energy and Citizenship. These will now be made available on our website and Solve Ninja Forum, and also disseminated via our Chatbot.

3. Any challenges

Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator

1. The changing COVID guidelines and transitions from online to offline and vice versa put a roadblock on program design and delivery. The current cohort got delayed by 4 months because of the last COVID wave in the country
2. While the small seed fund provides an avenue for the participants to work on their problem statements, finding funding beyond the cohort is still a challenge for most participants
3. Building and running organisations is not an easy task, but it gets even difficult in the non-profit sector. Since getting investors is a challenge, the youth with their ideas and solutions might find it difficult to continue sustaining their vision

Building Communities

1. The youth have been a part of various communities in the past- tied to deliverables and commitments. It is taking some time to build their trust and engage them in actions that will have a positive impact on their communities
2. Behaviour change and getting citizens, in general, to understand climate change and its effects is difficult. People expect policy changes and solutions, but small measures do have the power to dent big.

Building technology tools to engage citizens across different geographies, enable collaboration and informed decision making

1. The users engaging on the chatbot range from 11-60 years of age. Designing customised engagement strategies for different age groups across different languages has been a bit of a challenge
2. Most users got onboarded on the chatbot via certain keywords or social intermediaries like teachers, mentors, Yuva Cabinet presidents etc. Getting the masses to engage with the platform needed a shift in thinking. The IVRS to chatbot integration has solved that challenge for us and reduced the dependency on social intermediaries to get people on board

4. Any new avenues of collaboration (with other Grantees of RCF or other NPO/NGO)

-Collaboration with Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi (DDCD): As part of Delhi Government’s commitment to building a sustainable, equitable and modern Delhi by 2047, Reap Benefit will be co-creating the concept of Mohalla Paryavaran Mitra initiative. In the next three years, using the Solve Ninja technology platform, we are looking to engage 3 lakh citizens and youth in civic and environmental issues in their neighbourhoods

-Deshbhakti Curriculum with the Education Department of Government of NCT, Delhi : Targeted at 4.5 lakh students this year, Reap Benefit, through its problem solving ideology, toolkits and events will be integrating a practical, action-oriented methodology to the Deshbhakti curriculum. It has been designed to instil a sense of responsibility and duty towards the country with an intent to enable children to take small steps towards solving issues in their local communities
-Entrepreneurial Mindset Curriculum with Education Department, Andhra Pradesh government : A 30 school pilot conducted last year is now being scaled up to reach 300 schools (4.5 lakh students) across the state. With Global Alliance of Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME) as the lead partner, Udhyam Learning Foundation, Reap Benefit, Maker Ghat and Aflatoun International will be contributing as implementing partners to deliver the curriculum
Project Based Learning with Kaivalya Education Foundation in Jhunjunu, Rajasthan : After a 100 school intervention on a five day water conservation challenge and a bootcamp program on 0 Plastic Waste project, the partnership is moving forward this year towards scale. 1500 students will go through the five day challenge through the Department of Education and 7000+ Grade 6-8 adolescents across 100+ schools in Jhunjunu are building their problem solving skills and becoming active citizens in their communities by engaging in community waste management projects
-Mission Innovation Mysuru : Reap Benefit has signed a three year MoU with the University of Mysore to collaborate for its Mission Innovation Mysuru program to help build skills and enable future entrepreneurs to have the knowledge and skills to thrive in the evolving global economy. The students will be a part of Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator program
-Collaborating with Hume Centre to make an online platform for data collection , visualisation and public reporting aspects for their programs on citizen climate connect. To see the link- click here - wayanad.solveninja.org

5. Highlights from the initiatives being undertaken as part of your organisation

-We recently constituted a new governance board for Reap Benefit. With Preeti Sawhney, as our chairperson, we welcomed Kailash Nadh (CTO, Zerodha), Shreyasi Singh (Co-founder,Harappa Education), Maria Clara Pinheiro (Senior Advisor, Ashoka) and Veerendra Mishra (Indian Police Service, Madhya Pradesh) to the board. Given their vast and varied experiences, we are looking forward to working with them in taking the Solve Ninja movement forward.
-Org Capacity Building: 50% leadership comprises grassroots mentors who have risen the ranks. The core team includes a significant number of individuals who are first generation learners and represent mega cities and villages at the same time. From this year onwards, we are creating a dedicated budget and space to create learning opportunities for different team members to learn skills, mindsets and knowledge that will help them in their core role and towards their goals. Team members have been attending courses by the Takshashila Workshop, ISD She Represents, Education Cohort by Glific, Engage and Enable Workshop by Kshetra, No Coders Builder Workshop among others
-Given the mission we are on, we are engaging with Sahayog Foundation to help us design our partnership strategy and connect with like minded organisations in taking the work forward. They are also supporting us in assessing our financial model and how we further strengthen it to deliver at scale. With 10 team members going through the Engage and Evolve Workshops by Kshetra, we are hopeful of building the partnership muscle in the team

-We are undertaking a research study with Aapti Institute to understand the enablers and barriers for youth in civic and public problem solving. Spread across Punjab, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu- the preliminary research has surfaced interesting insights into how youth are using technology and approaching problem solving across rural and urban settings. It is also opening pathways towards using the framework to build youth capacities towards addressing issues across different thematics such as climate, health, education among others.

6. Outcomes you are chasing for the next 6 months (these can remain the same if unchanged since the last update)

We are on track to:

1. Engage youth in the Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator. We have partnered with Mysore University to
2. Organise events like Solvathon, Climate Olympiad
3. Build 10 regional communities (Yuva Cabinets) across the country to engage in environmental and climate actions in the communities
4. Reach out and collaborate with non-profit organisations to building sustainable ecosystems in rural neighbourhoods
5. Organise and invite partners for a once year knowledge sharing event
6. Strengthen Reap Benefit technology capacities to reach citizens and communities across different geographies, enable collaboration and informed decision making on climate change mitigation- we will continue to reach new users, increase the engagement rate via the chatbot. The focus in Q2 and Q3 will be on rolling out the DIY marketplace and building a city based dashboard with climate change indicators for at least 1 more city. The integration of chatbot and dashboard is a focus area for Q2. We are also building an open city tech stack-the word press for civic environment issues

7. KPIs (please use this section to let us know of the impact and reach of your work since the last update)

1. 6 change leaders are completing their 6 month journey as a part of the Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator
2. 7 Yuva Cabinets across Karnataka and Punjab engaging 98 youth in environmental and climate problem solving. 2 persona based communities on Solutions and Policy to build youth momentum and enable action
3. The Solve Ninja chatbot has 75k+ registered users with more than 2.3 million interactions and an average interaction rate of 20% which has now increased to 47% post our experiments with behaviour science. There are City based dashboards with crowdsourced climate change indicators for 5 cities- Bangalore, Chennai, Amritsar, Patiala and Wayanad
4. We are partnering with the Dialogue and Development Commission of Delhi to co-create the concept of Paryavaran Mitra initiative to engage 3 lakh citizens in environmental and civic problem solving, Education Department of Govt. of Delhi to implement the Deshbhakti curriculum to engage students in action-oriented problem solving, education department of Andhra Pradesh government to implement Entrepreneurial Mindset Curriculum in collaboration with GAME, Udhyam Learning Foundation, Maker Ghat and Aflatoun. We are also partnering with Kaivalya Education Foundation to implement project based learning projects with ~6000 students in Jhunjunu, with Kick-Off Solutions to build leadership capabilities in adolescent and youth girls from tribal communities across Jharkhand, Pondicherry among other places.

8. Can Rainmatter be of help with anything at all

1. Connecting us with grassroots organisations, welfare associations, corporates in Delhi to accelerate citizen engagement.

9. Any additional details you would like to provide

NA

10. Please also share any images or videos that you have documented as part of your work
Gadag Yuva Cabinet organised a meeting with 60 MGNREGA workers to get together to start addressing the lack of water and other issues in their village.

[Nayanika]

1. Overall updates (since the last update)

Hello everyone!

Reap Benefit is back with another round of updates. In 2022, we signed an MoU with 3 state governments - with a potential of impacting 4.5 million youth by 2025, seeded 171 youth communities engaging in climate and civic action in their communities, supported ~70 budding social entrepreneurs through the Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator and built Samaaja- a free and open source web application for rapidly building and deploying location based citizen engagement services. Read on to know more!

2. Progress on the goals listed while on-boarding

Goal 1 Enable adolescents and youth to build a movement of environment conscious leaders

1.1 Identify and support youth from 15-20 different geographies with demonstrated interest in building sustainable communities through our Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator program

About the Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator: Enterprising youth (between 18-24 years of age) who either have a deep interest or a demonstrated history of engaging in climate and civic public problem solving are taken on an immersive, hands-on leadership program to help them scale or provide depth to their innovations.

In the last year, we ran the program through two channels:

Channel 1: Independently run a cohort of 25 participants. Following the success of the first cohort, we received a total of 86 applications from 15 states in the country-Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Delhi, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. Out of the participants selected for this cohort- 52% were women leaders and 44% were from rural communities.

Details about a few cohort participants:

1. Through her initiative Sustainably Messy, Sanskriti Sharma has also been able to generate employment for 5 women and has helped them become financially independent. Through Sustainably Messy, she wants to make sustainable gifting an affordable experience for all and has worked extensively on product designing for creating unique upcycled fabric products. During the course of the program, she was able to upcycle about 90-100 kgs of leftover fabric into tote bags, laptop bags, wallets, Rakhis etc. and created a customer base of 200 people. In the next 1-2 years, she wants to create an ecosystem of highly skilled (production) workers, women from low income communities, upcycle 100kgs of fabric every month and generate a revenue of 1.5-2 lakhs per month

2. Santosh Kumar SV aims to create self-sustaining villages by making use of all the locally available resources using traditional/ rural cultural practices. He has experience in working with farmers related to Agri- Eco Tourism and also created products from farm wastes like Areca Wood as a way to generate income for farmers. He hopes to build a sustainable organisation related to the same at village level. He planned a rural immersion trip for 210 students and 28 teachers from The Valley School of Krishnamurthi Foundation Bangalore and The creative School India Bileshivale. A Total amount of Rs. 14,70,000 was generated through this experience

3. Addressing the lack of knowledge among people on the minimum green cover required in their regions, Kaushik Ravi is creating an app that provides personalised and actionable data on increasing and sustaining green cover in local communities. He has recently been recognised as an Avery Dennison Scholar. Avery Dennison awards are designed to acknowledge invention, innovation and excellence in high achieving students

The cohort gave the program an **NPS of 75-**positively acknowledging the mentor support provided and access to problem solving tools and resources that enabled the participants to be innovative and scale/deepen their impact .

Solve Ninja Leadership Utsav: Our attempts to build collectives around climate and civic action, brought 31 civic leaders from 10 states across the country together in a 2.5 day gathering in Bangalore. The civic leaders are working on a range of problems from climate change to unauthorised waste dumping to youth leadership in governance to unsustainable farming methods. With spaces for interactions, learning and mentoring, the Solve Ninja Utsav got an NPS rating of 85 from the civic leaders- 93% said they learnt from other Solve Ninjas, 98% said they had fun, 90% said they felt engaged and heard, 95% said they learnt something new and 90% said they learnt something new about themselves. For taking out the time and providing a fresh new zeal to the civic leaders’ climate and civic problem solving journeys, we are incredibly grateful to Sachin Malhan, Dev Tayde, Rishabh Lalani, Sahana Jose, Divya Naryanan. The Utsav may be over, but the celebration of their journeys are still on.

Channel 2: As part of a three year MoU with the University of Mysore, we ran the Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator with participants of the University’s MSW program. 50% of the participants are from underserved communities and 30% are from rural communities. They have collectively impacted 8000+ people, built a base of 50+ volunteers and conducted 165+ events in their communities.

Details about a few cohort participants:

1. To reduce the number of Chamrajnagar farmers committing suicide due to their inability to access Minimum Support price, loss of crop because of wild animals and unemployment during lean season, Madhu and Prajwal started creating WhatsApp and IVRS based e-linkages between farmers and consumers. Through their efforts, vegetables worth 10,000 rupees have been sold

2. Testing 100 drinking water samples across Chamrajnangar, Chethan and Suresha used WhatsApp based mechanisms to receive water quality testing requests and relaying results and suggestions to farmers for drinking and farming purposes. The water quality has been mapped for 25 villages.

Most of the participants are first generation learners and the SNLA program has inspired them into social entrepreneurship. 5 of the initiatives are working towards registering as not for profit organisations. To support them in this endeavour, we would like to provide them a seed fund of Rs. 1.5 lakh rupees for six months to help them take their work forward.

1.2 Organize events like Solvathon, Climate Olympiad

The Reap Benefit team conducted an Innovation Challenge with 79 students of Sri Kumaran’s Children Home- investing 300+ hours in problem solving and diverting about 4.4 tonnes of waste from the landfill.

As part of the challenge, a student group called Waste Warriors found that the school generates 4,400 kgs of unsegregated dry waste in a year and the support staff spent additional 200 hours a year in cleaning the classrooms. Waste Warriors of SKCH ICSE took upon themselves a quest to solve the problem of mixed waste in the school. Students successfully employed behaviour science through design to get the rest of the school to segregate the waste . Collecting feedback from different users like teachers, students and support staff helped them create the most suitable features for their bin. 5 Human Centred Design Bins have been kept all across the school for the last couple of months- which is a huge accomplishment! The students gave the Innovation Day an NPS rating of 55- a great validation that the program was highly appreciated by the students and most of them will actively recommend others to join the program.

1.3 Strengthen communities of adolescents and youth across different regions on environment and climate change mitigation themes like solutions, policy, technology, training etc

An integral step of Reap Benefit’s work to scale is to sow the seeds of movement building. Youth need to become active and keep taking sustained actions to improve their neighbourhoods. This can best happen when a set of like-minded people organise themselves with that common purpose and have the sufficient access to knowledge, skills and tools to make a difference in their neighbourhoods.

The attempt is to ignite this movement by building and nurturing self sustained and self managed communities- ie. Solve Ninja Yuva Cabinets. In this network approach, the platform provides leadership opportunities to existing Solve Ninjas to induct more youth; creating a multiplier effect. Leveraging the community (like wikipedia), local cabinets make the tools, data, knowledge and technology more contextual. Thereby creating a sustainable movement of Solve Ninjas irrespective of Reap Benefit (the organisation).

Types of Yuva Cabinets

1. Based on geography- School, College, Area, City
2. Based on interests or skills- such as policy, solutions
3. Based on age- Adolescent (13- 16 years) and youth (17-25 years)

In the last year, we have been able to seed 171 such youth communities (called Yuva Cabinets) with ~2300 members who have mobilised ~8000 citizens to take actions across 12 states in the country (Karnataka, Tami Nadu, Punjab, West Bengal, UP, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Odisha, Bihar). 1 in 2 Yuva Cabinet members are women.
Amongst the actions taken

1. 39.3% actions have been reports to local authorities
2. 29% actions have been investigations and hands-on solutions
3. 23% actions have been campaigns

Basavaraj D, from Muthalli in Karnataka, works as a daily wage worker. He aims to build his village as a quintessential model by solving citizens’ issues on lack of basic schemes, Sanitation, Health, and Water. Driven by this zeal, he inspired 40 youth to clear 3500 kg of garbage across his village on World Environment Day in 2022. Further strengthening his civic muscle, he got 100 families in his village to register for Ayushman Bharat Health scheme to access benefits of Rs. 5 lakhs per family- unlocking schemes worth 5 crores for his village!!!

In Ganjigatti, Hubli, Bala Cabinet President Veeresh mobilised adolescents and resources in his village to conduct the first ever Makkala Grama Sabha and share a list of their problems with the Panchayat Development Officer. By enabling access to mentors, peers, knowledge and nudges, we are seeing youth transforming their roles in a bottom-up engagement in their communities.

Solve Ninjas Devi and Kavitha helped the people in a slum called Padhmavati Colony in Raichur district in Karnataka access safe drinking water, clean neighbourhoods and proper shelters. Taking matters into their own hands, they mobilised the community to drive behaviour change practices and eventually took the matter to the relevant authorities to drive action. It has not only reshaped their role as empowered changemakers in their communities, but has also enabled larger communities to safeguard themselves against issues arising from climate change.

1.4 Create playbooks with behaviour nudges on themes around environment and climate change

A total of 38 playbooks across Waste, Water, Sanitation, Energy and Citizenship have been created. Structured on the design thinking principles of DISS- Discover, Investigate, Solve and Share- these have been used across our programs and with a few partners to aid in climate and civic action.

• Kaivalya Education Foundation disseminated all 38 playbooks via an exhibition held last year. The playbooks were also shared with the government of Odisha as part of their engagements.
• The playbooks have also been accessed by SNLA participants to further their training and programs as part of the organisations they are building. One such example is Pranay Dasari who used the playbooks in his organisation called Inquilab.

As part of our collaboration with Team4Tech- we will be converting these playbooks into smaller modules and video options for easy dissemination.

2. Strengthen the ecosystem to build environmental consciousness

In 2022, we signed an MoU with 3 state governments - with a potential of impacting 4.5 million youth by 2025.

1. SCERT, Delhi to build one of a kind K12 curriculum to build 21st century skills through climate action activities and bridging the gap between values and actions- impacting 1.8 million youth in 2023.

2. Dialogue and Development Commission, Delhi (DDCD) to co-create the largest platform in the country to increase participation in climate issues- set to impact 0.3 million youth by 2025.

3. Punjab Municipal Infrastructure Development Company (PMIDC)- enable 2 million youth by 2025 to reimagine their role as climate action changemakers in their communities.

4. Education Department, Andhra Pradesh - part of an alliance integrating an entrepreneurial mindset curriculum across 0.45 million youth in 2022

Apart from Ministries of Education, we are also working in partnership with 3 out of the 250 Delhi MCD wards and leveraging the power of technology and grassroots mobilisation to help build councillor capacities to effectively engage citizens in civic and climate problem solving, integrated our work with non-profits and local municipalities to increase citizen youth engagement around climate issues in a systemic manner.

We are collaborating with non-profits and governments alike to integrate:

1. Climate Action Pedagogy through action-oriented playbooks and engagements
2. Our technology Platform to enable access to knowledge, mentors, peers, local data and nudges

More details are available in the section on collaboration.

We have however not been able to hold a knowledge sharing event amongst ecosystem partners.

3. Strengthen RB technology capacities to each citizens and communities across different geographies, enable collaboration and informed decision making on climate change mitigation

Reap Benefit is building Samaaja (Society) - a free and open source web application for rapidly building and deploying location based citizen engagement services. Built on top of the Frappe framework, it bundles geo-maps support, user authentication and profiles, location based report management and collation and a lot more, complete with APIs and webhooks for external integrations, admin and end user UIs and management dashboards. It aims to be like WordPress, the blogging/CMS platform, but for location based citizen-user engagement service- that can be easily extended to add new functionality and is infinitely customisable.

For example, with Samaaja as the backend, it is possible to build services such as:

• A location based mobile app for volunteers to collate and report data on the field. An admin dashboard for the organisation to track volunteer activity.

• A WhatsApp chatbot for citizens to take photos of civic issues in their locality (for example, potholes) to report them seamlessly. A dashboard for civic administrators to examine and map these reports in realtime and to provide redressal and responses.

• A public website with data visualisation and statistics on such reports.

Enhancing access to local data, nudges, knowledge, mentor and peer support, Samaaja is going to be an ecosystem game changer. Building the Solve Ninja Platform as an instance on Samaaja, we have been able to build Samaaj Data- map visualisation of crowd-sourced data about civic and environmental issues at hyperlocal level that are verified by local citizens. So far, we have close to 60K data points on the platform which covers various issues ranging from tree mapping to urban flooding to stubble burning.

While our technology journey started with an app, the platform now consists of a WhatsApp based chatbot, Samaaj Data with hyper-local data across heat maps and geo-boundaries, Changemaker Portfolio (A git hub of community actions and problem solving skills developed for each Solve Ninja), Leaderboard (A detailed dashboard with information about Ninjas, actions, check-in trends across different cities and regions. ) and Forum (A quora for civic and climate problem solving). The platform has grown from strength to strength and is currently supporting 90,000 youth across 21 states with an engagement rate of ~30%.

• Leveraging the 31,000 data points for stubble burning (available on Samaaj Data) across Punjab, Yuva Cabinet President Hardeep Singh prevented 10,500 acres of land and subsequent air pollution by conducting regular awareness campaigns and sessions. Kultar Singh Sandhwan, Honourable Speaker, Punjab Legislative Assembly lauded his efforts.

• During the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) election, Reap Benefit designed a technology-enabled campaign to engage citizens and help them view the election through a lens of public problem-solving and civic awareness. The campaign was called “Humara Mohalla, Humara vote” (Our street, our vote) Paryavaran Mitra is the largest volunteer network in Delhi, working to solve various environmental issues in the city. The goal of this campaign was to make the environment a daily agenda within Delhi’s political and citizen spheres. Reap Benefit used Glific’s WhatsApp chatbot technology to execute the campaign, reaching out to a pool of ~7,000 citizens who had joined the volunteering platform. The team was able to use the Glific platform to get targeted in understanding the behaviours of the users to make the interactions better and easier! We tried the following:

• Created user groups based on gender, language preference, and geography to measure engagement separately and to learn what type of content and language is interesting to the users

• Gamification techniques such as providing a badge after completing the interaction, nudge-based rewards for interacting with the chatbot, and completing the call to action.

By using these tactics, the Paryavaran Mitra team was able to increase engagement by 2X and activate more than 50% of the volunteers to participate.

Approximately 33% of engaged citizens reported that they discussed civic issues with candidates and subsequently voted in elections

4. Support product and process experiments and innovations

1. For the chatbot to be a true running mate for citizens in civic and climate problem solving, we realised the answer lied in leveraging behaviour science to understand social norms. It is more than getting a grip on usage and behaviour; it is about understanding the cultural, gender or temporal norms citizens ascribe or aspire to. In this regard, we have been engaging with Insomanywords… Humanisation of the chatbot- fancy as it may sound, the focus has been on giving the chatbot an affable personality for user affinity, ensuring consistency in the tonality of the messages and using the chatbot as a member of the community. Over the last two years Reap Benefit has been using a WhatsApp based chatbot (powered by Glific to nudge young people and citizens towards a vision of becoming changemakers in their communities. The basic idea behind nudging is that people can be influenced to make better choices (ex- exercising the right to vote, joining a local community to improve waste management, auditing the street to discover issues that affect the well being of the environment and so on ) by changing the default options in a decision-making process, providing feedback or information about a behaviour, or using social norms to encourage certain actions. Focusing on relevance, value, urgency, emotion, user control, social influence and scarcity, 20K new youth joined the Solve Ninja Movement and ~50K were engaged in climate and civic action in the communities last year.

3. Any challenges

1. Solve Ninjas don’t directly get remunerated - we believe it is essential to maintain the spirit of volunteerism and community engagement. However, we do understand that the youth join the Solve Ninja movement to gain skills and experience, and have access to a broader community of youth seeking to solve similar civic and climate issues in their communities by using fun and innovative ways. There is also a small incentive for Yuva Cabinet Presidents to organise events to mobilise more youth towards action. We will constantly need to be aware of the motivations that drive youth and enable the same to shape their role as changemakers in their communities
2. We have created the low-code technology platform to cater to the needs of nearly 500 million Indians coming online for the first time by 2022- predominantly from the bottom 60% of India’s income distribution - allowing for easy customisation and growth. However, if the communities don’t use it to engage in local climate and civic problem solving, it will add to the list of the many technology solutions built but not adopted

4. Any new avenues of collaboration (with other Grantees of RCF or other NPO/NGO)

Government Collaborations

a. As part of Delhi Government’s commitment to building a sustainable, equitable and modern Delhi by 2047, Reap Benefit is co-creating the concept of Paryavaran Mitra initiative. In the next three years, using the Solve Ninja technology platform, we are looking to engage 3 lakh citizens and youth in climate and civic issues in their neighbourhoods.

i. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s 15 point winter action plan for 2022 to curb the hazardous air pollution in the city highlighted the role that Paryavaran Mitras will play in driving collaborative action.
ii. Launched in July 2022, as part of the Paryavaran Mitra Initiative, information about 4 local environmental policies in Delhi were made available through the chatbot to ~4000 users. Breaking silos and insufficient feedback loops, youth responded and shared opinions about the policy and changes that could be implemented. Collected via the chatbot, the information was analysed, documented and shared with larger audiences on the forum and back again to the registered users through WhatsApp chatbot. The Ministry of Environment is now acting on a few suggested inputs regarding Delhi’s Electric Vehicle Policy.

b. Reap Benefit has signed an MoU with Punjab Municipal Infrastructure Development Company (PMIDC) signed an MoU with Punjab Municipal Infrastructure Development Company (PMIDC)- Department of Local Government, Punjab in January 2023 to create a youth engagement platform enhancing their participation in local climate and civic issues and collaboration with local government. This will be rolled out across 13 Corporation Towns in Punjab, engaging 2 million youth by 2024-2025 in their communities.

c. Reap Benefit has signed an MoU with SCERT (official tweet) to integrate an action-oriented methodology to one of Delhi government’s flagship mindset change initiatives- Deshbhakti Curriculum ( aimed at enabling students to bring an action oriented mindset towards their communities). It is set to be delivered to 18 lakh adolescents in 2023 across 1000 schools under the Delhi government.

d. We are also a part of the alliance integrating an Entrepreneurial Mindset Curriculum (being delivered across 4.5 lakh adolescents since October 2022) in Andhra Pradesh government schools. This follows a pilot conducted across 300 schools last year that led to an increase in self efficacy by 76% and self awareness by 88%. See the detailed impact report from the pilot here.

e. We are working with Jal Jeevan Mission in Assam that recognizes the need to build the relevant skills and mindsets in adolescents and is doing so through targeted school interventions. The Department of Water in Assam is working with the Department of Education. The programme: Positions adolescents (Grade 8, 9 and 11) as agents of change (called Jal Doots) in their communities. It aims to build 21st century skills among students to take on leadership roles with focus on water issues. We are targeting 2 lakh students until 2024. Reap Benefit is designing project based events and activities, conducting skill assessments and providing technology support.

f. To enable local councillors in delivery and maintenance of basic services and civic amenities such as parks, roads, waste management etc., we worked with 20 councillors across Bangalore and Chennai to support them with technology, consistent nudges and capacity building support to engage citizens meaningfully. In January 2023, we also started working with 3 local councillors out of the 250 wards under Municipal Corporation of Delhi in this regard. As part of this engagement and our partnership with Dialogue and Development Commision of Delhi’s (DDCD) to co-create the Paryavaran Mitra initiative, a Jan Swachchta Abhiyan Campaign was launched in April by Ms. Licpriya Kangujam - India’s youngest climate activist to represent the country in the UN.

Reap Benefit’s roles and responsibilities:

1. Overall design & content support: Reap Benefit will create the engagement plan for youth volunteers including strategy and designing of activities, initiatives, volunteering journeys, identification of channels to get volunteers, offline and online engagement in a calendared format.

2. Technology Support: Leveraging Reap Benefit’s content tools like the playbooks of projects, activities and campaigns and tech tools like the chatbot, forum, Leaderboard, User Profiles and dashboard to create a simple searchable database and a volunteer management system that will help the government manage this initiative effectively. These nudges relate to inducing (consistent engagement, motivation, encouragement to introspect) and rewarding (appreciation) Ninja actions. The process of nudging is further buttressed by use of the WhatsApp chatbot, and other technological tools.

Non-Profit Collaborations

1. Reap Benefit and CIVIS partnered together on the Choomacchar campaign-a citizen driven initiative to crowdsource malaria hotspots in Mumbai. Using everyday technology like WhatsApp, the Solve Ninja chatbot engaged 529 citizens to map 731 malaria zones in Mumbai. The data was analysed, represented on dashboards and shared with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation- 60% of the issues reported so far have been addressed!

2. Through our partnership with Kick-Off Solutions, we have been engaging with tribal girls across 12 states in the country to become active and engaged change leaders. Be it Kajal addressing water issues in her village in Hutup, Jharkhand or Premlata mobilising 22 youth to start waste segregation and creating dustbins for waste disposal in Lepsar in Jharkhand, or Varsha making a transition to menstrual cup from sanitary pads and encouraging her friends to do the same in Pratapgarh in Maharashtra, we feel both proud and privileged to be part of their leadership journeys! Watch Sayali talk about how creating a map for her village (Karjat, Maharashtra), listing the challenges and getting mentor support made her go on the road less travelled and read what Anand Devsharma, Co-Founder Kick Off Solutions has to say about the engagement here.

3. MEDHA: In collaboration with the Government of Chhachhrauli, our engagement activated 500 Solve Ninjas to take consistent problem solving action in their communities and build 21st century skills like data orientation, communication, problem solving skills

4. Kaivalya Education Foundation: In Oct 2022 , Kaivalya Education Foundation approached Reap Benefit with a proposal to introduce Project Based Learning(PBL) in Jhunjhunu district in Rajasthan. 2400 students from 50 schools in Jhunjhunu participated for a bootcamp program on the 0 Plastic Waste project. During the program, 3 playbooks were Integrated into PBL. The students built their problem solving skills and became active citizens in their communities by engaging in community waste management projects.

5. Mission Innovation Mysuru: Reap Benefit has signed a three year MoU with the University of Mysore to collaborate for its Mission Innovation Mysuru program to enable future entrepreneurs to have the knowledge and skills to thrive in the evolving global economy.

6. We are also in conversation with LALA to share our knowledge, best practices and learnings on behaviour science to engage citizens in local climate and civic action through a WhatsApp based chatbot

5. Highlights from the initiatives being undertaken as part of your organisation

1. In 2022, Reap Benefit was selected as a 2022 WISEAwards winner! We were among the 6 winners from 5 countries and were selected for our approach to tackling global educational challenges.

2. Ending the year on another high, the Reap Benefit team gave a Net Promoter Score of 64 for our services and products and 58 for the organisation. Last year, it was 57 and 54 respectively. Through qualitative feedback, the work culture (flexibility, growth and learning orientation), diversity and mission alignment amongst the team seems to be working well. Things that we can work upon include creating spaces for team members to bond and solve civic and climate problems together, increase access to materials and tools required to do work and build stronger processes. An NPS above 50 is considered excellent by industry standards and we are hopeful of working on the feedback to build Reap Benefit as a great place to work!

3. Reap Benefit was featured in Stanford Social Innovation last month for Thinking and Acting Like a Platform for citizens to create impact at scale. The article highlighted the importance of how platform thinking pushes social entrepreneurs to leave the role of the problem solver in favour of being an enabler of change makers who can solve problems locally

4. A report by Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies on active citizenship and citizen engagement in India titled Hum Log- highlights a case study on Reap Benefit and its grassroots and technology led action narrative

6. Outcomes you are chasing for the next 6 months (these can remain the same if unchanged since the last update)

Remain the same

7. KPIs (please use this section to let us know of the impact and reach of your work since the last update)

Youth reached through SNLA: 73

Organise events like Solvathon: Done

Create playbooks with behaviour nudges on themes around environment and climate change. For example- water conservation, blackspot fixing : 38 created

Mobilize and engage 3000 adolescents and youth through the technology platforms: Done

Create 20 regional communities: 171 communities were seeded

Create 4 persona communities: 2 have been functional since 2021. More haven’t been created

Reach out to 10 ecosystem partners and partner with atleast 2: Done

Organize and invite partners for a once year knowledge sharing event: Not done

Strengthen Reap Benefit technology capacities to reach citizens and communities across different geographies, enable collaboration and informed decision making on climate change mitigation : We have not built a DIY marketplace, but have strengthened the chatbot and built Samaaja

8. Can Rainmatter be of help with anything at all

-Data visualizers & data storytellers that can help tell Ninja stories more meaningfully

-Connect us with organizations that have public data and are interested in sharing it

-Mentoring support for a few participants from the Solve Ninja Leadership Accelerator that are working on building rural economies

9. Any additional details you would like to provide

N/A

10. Please also share any images or videos that you have documented as part of your work.

Solve Ninjas Devi and Kavitha helped the people in a slum called Padhmavati Colony in Raichur district in Karnataka access safe drinking water, clean neighbourhoods and proper shelters.

Watch more from their story here-
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nGM84QrPkOi6wx8oW2um08_-QVD1lCBG/view