The Oscars of Children’s awards honoured top 100 winning schools and school leaders of the Design For Change school challenge across 10,000 schools from 26 states at the Entrepreneurship Development Institute of India (EDI) in Ahmedabad at the ‘I CAN’ Awards on Saturday. The guests of honor this year were- Cricket legend Rahul Dravid, Actor & Activist Rahul Bose and 9 time World Billiards Champion Geet Sethi, who extended their support to inspire a billion children in India to BE THE CHANGE!

Former Indian captain and cricket legend Rahul Dravid said “The concept of Design For Change reverses the role where children teach and inspire us through their ideas and actions.”

Performers, artists, dancers, musicians, entertainers, theatre-actors were all called in from all over India, to conduct workshops and entertain our young heroes of change. The focus of the workshop was to make it as much of a learning experience for all its participants, as it was a celebration of their achievement. Abhishek Saha conducted a workshop for educators for how to use theatre in education, while Ameen Haque’s session focused on the power of telling stories.

One of the main attractions was the workshop conducted by Parle G named ‘the Power of G’. The session focused on using a genius group of children, collaborating to make an edible installation using more than 500 packets of Parle G biscuits in 90 minutes. The installation was a star attraction for all the participants and attendees of the event and was placed at the Gala Dinner after the I Can Awards 2014 as dessert.

Speaking about this gala event, Mr. Mayank Shah, Deputy Marketing Manager , Parle Products said, “We are proud to partner with DFC for the ‘I CAN’ Awards 2014 as we strongly believe that every child has the potential to be a Genius and can make a difference. Our ‘Aao Banaye Kal ke Genius’ campaign which had ‘Roko Mat, Toko Mat’ as its tagline is based on the same idea as the DFC movement, which was the driving force behind this collaboration. We hope that this synergy brings about a change and makes the world a better place”.

Parle G had recently embarked on a ‘movement to free children from the bondage of structured education’ as well as launched its ‘Aao banaye kal ke Genius’ campaign and has now joined hands with Design For Change to celebrate the exemplary work of the winners. Both the brands have taken this initiative in spearheading change in our society and their combined effort is aimed at nurturing curious minds and celebrating Child Geniuses by providing a platform for every child to shine!

“There is a need to bring about a change in the current education system and include sports in the curriculum. The playground provides a better learning environment as compared to the regular chalk and talk method.” said Geet Sethi, world renowned snooker champion.

“If we want our children to follow their dreams we would need the parents to undergo a shift in mindset. Workshops need to be organized in such a way that parents realize that children can pursue much more than engineering and medicine.”  Meera Issacs, Principal, Cathedral School

”I think that sports is the door to excellence in academics which is probably the most critical element of education” according to our community.” Said Rahul Bose

In 2014, Design for Change received close to 2000 stories of change from all over India which went through a rigorous jury process to select the Top 100. The top 20 of these 100 stories were awarded prizes from Disney, Amar Chitra Katha and Educational Initiatives. While the top 5 most innovative stories got INR 50 000/- each, Disney also gave Disney Play Centers to the top 20 schools. Amar Chitra Katha and Educational Initiatives lavished these 100 school students with gift hampers and online learning packages respectively.

Design For Change, the largest global movement whose reach has grown to more than 35 countries in the past 6 years, promotes the belief in children that they can make the world a better place. Students participate in the Design for Change School Challenge by identifying anything that bothers them, and to transform it using the simple 4-step process of Feel, Imagine, Do and Share.

Details of Award Winning Stories:

Some of the most inspiring stories of change awarded and celebrated during the I Can Awards 2014 are:

Topic: Waste Management and Hygiene

School: Mahabodhi Residential School

Location: Leh, Jammu and Kashmir

Students of grade 7 and 8 led a Design for change story in their school along with the children from middle school.

In their five day campaign, the children divided 200 acres of their campus into eight group, and then each group took responsibility for cleaning one part per group.

Children set to work on the following issues: Cleaning, Education, Dustbin, Art and Paper. The garbage collected was then used to make reusable products. Tin and metal cans were used to make dustbins. One Student-group build a compost for organic waste to produce manure. The Education team gave sessions on health and hygiene to various spaces such as hostel, monastery, etc.

Impact: Children cleaned an area of 200 acres, built a compost and recycled waste.

http://stories.dfcworld.com/storyvid.aspx?id=IND-ENG-19481131-2014

Topic: Make Open Defecation free village

School: ChettinadVidyaMandir

Location: Karur, Tamil Nadu

There were no toilets in Vellapatti, a rural village near ChettinadVidyaMandir School. To add to that was the poor maintenance of municipal toilets, people preferred to resort to defecating in public. The risk was not just of diseases, but also of snake bites. Students took support of panchayat to renovate toilets, as well as built 20 individual toilets, 20 chambers and a septic tank, which came to an estimate of INR6,00,000.

Students conducted a series of activities to raise funds. They also organized a marathon, a street play and spread awareness in government village children about the benefits of washing hands after using the toilet.

Impact: Students with the support of Village Panchayat built 20 individual toilets, 20 chambers and a septic tank in the Vellapatti village.

http://stories.dfcworld.com/storyvid.aspx?id=IND-ENG-5988918-2014

Topic: BalSamsad

School: Parimal Foundation for Education Leadership

Location: Rajgarh, Madhya Pradesh

A small school in a tiny town of Rajgarh has 65 students who are eager to learn. But due to inconsistent attendance of teachers, the learning gets  disrupted, school events were a mess, so were the school facilities.

Students decided to take charge of their own learning by forming a Student Parliament, and formed Cabinets with Food, Weather, Education and Environment Ministers taking charge of their departments. Students created learning environment for themselves, and found ways to learn-teach as a collective group of students.

Impact: Children empowered their ownselves by forming a student parliament to take care of school responsibilities.

Topic: Girls Football team

School: BAL BHARATI PUBLIC SCHOOL

Location: PITAMPURA, New Delhi

Girls in the school felt excluded from the Sports field and wanted to form a team where girls played football along with boys on school grounds. The change began with a small group of girls who took the initiative of forming a football team. They bravely withstood the jeering of boys while playing and soon enough were joined by more girls who wanted to play football. They put in a lot of efforts and finally got a place in the quarter finals of prestigious Subroto Cup.

Impact: Girls felt more confident and broke gender stereotypes existing within their own school premises.

Topic: Stop Begging, Start Working

School: KALIGI RANGANATHAN MONTFORD

Location: Chennai

Children got disturbed by seeing people begging. They were deeply bothered by the condition of poor people who were forced to beg, as they could not find a source of income. On fiding more by talking to some beggers, they realized that there was a strong desire in most beggars they met to be self reliant. Unfortunately, they were not getting any employment. And so, the children from Kalgi school took upon themselves to conduct rallies, conduct workshops, meet authorities, and organizing a press conference. Sudents even saved their pocket monies and talked to temple authorieis to provide job opportunities to three beggars. They were widely covered by the press and media in Chennai, and shone as role models for the society.

Impact: Providing livelihood to 3 beggars by setting up petty shops for them.

http://stories.dfcworld.com/storyvid.aspx?id=IND-ENG-23965029-2014

Topic: Menstrual Hygiene

School: THE GALAXY SCHOOL

Location: Rajkot, Gujarat

The issue of women’s hygiene in the community is a growing concern. Women nearby school community are either unaware of what is necessary to maintain good menstrual hygiene or they cannot afford to buy hygienic substances during their periods. Religious beliefs, affordability issues, and also the community that they live in affect the decisions that women take related to their periods. Students from Glaxy school decided to work on spreading awareness about the importance of maintaining good menstrual hygiene and also to solve affordability issues to a certain extent. For the affordability issue they researched, talked with various NGO’s and designed our own reusable cloth pad .

We then decided to make 5 step manual that taught women how to make these reusable cloth pads at home and how to sterilize them well. They held a donation rally in school where school students donated cloth and towels for theproject. They created awareness campaigns where they talked to the women about diseases that could be caused due to poor menstrual hygiene. They thought this issue needed to be targeted, because they thought if it were the matter of their health, they would be inclined to maintaining good menstrual hygiene.

Impact: Taught rural women of the community to make their own sanitary pads from resused clothes, and taught them how it can be washed to be reused.

Source : Sachin Murdeshwar