As the Saturday sun rises over Bengaluru’s towering buildings, children of the Sparkling Mindz Global School are caught up in a busy morning routine. They wake up at five, get ready, and leave for their destination of the week — a lake, a metro station, or a bustling neighbourhood — where they host their weekly interactive workshops and game stalls on environmental conservation.
These students have lately been mastering a balancing act. They spend hours drawing parallels between the water crisis that hit Bengaluru this summer and the just a month ago. The contrast is stark enough to raise some eyebrows and many questions.
Thanks to the curriculum at their school, these students know how to ask the right questions.
Thanks to the curriculum at their school, these students know how to ask the right questions like the back of their hand. “When adversity strikes, it affects a child in different ways. It can make them feel helpless. Hence, there is a need for purpose-driven action where children can see beyond themselves,” Sreeja Iyer, founder and CEO of Sparkling Mindz, tells The Better India.
With the contrast in question, it made perfect sense for Sreeja and the students to look at the challenge in a holistic sense. And so, they started peeling back the layers. Here’s how the students are charting (and even implementing!) solutions to navigate the thin line between the lack and abundance of water in Bengaluru.
But first, it’s worth pondering: Why have school students set out to solve water issues? Don’t they have their theory lessons to revise?
Well, their efforts are a natural extension of the ethos of Sparkling Mindz, which defines itself as a “progressive, child-centric alternate school”. And the institution is giving them all the right practical assignments.
At Sparkling Mindz, students aged between 14 and 17 are called ‘Unicorns’, the highest level in the school’s age-based hierarchy. The journey starts with toddlers as ‘Guppies’ and progresses through ‘Pups’, ‘Calves’, ‘Cubs’, ‘Joeys’, ‘Dolphins’, ‘Leopards’, and ‘Falcons’, culminating in the ‘Unicorns’.
As the Unicorns pull out some data from their recent work, Sreeja explains that it’s not unusual for Bengaluru to face such , but the problem lies in how young people view it from a very surface level. In the city’s attempt to safeguard its vulnerable, they are just given a holiday from school.
“But in that act of protection, who is addressing their reactions towards these calamities? This compelled our children to wonder: And why are most kids indifferent towards it?” she says.
“The urban planning of our city impacts our lives so much. We want children to understand what’s happening to their city,” says Aashna, a student.
Aashna Sankar, a student, observes a profound gap in access to comprehensible information that kids can rely on to frame an understanding of such issues and thus change their mindsets. “Don’t children deserve to know? Don’t children have a voice? The urban planning of our city impacts our lives so much, but we don’t have a say in it. We want children to understand what is happening to their city.” She gasps for breath as she emphasises ‘ ’.
The planning issue further tickled the curiosity of the students when Mihika Jain, a 16-year-old student at their school, missed her Trinity Communication Skills Exam because of that particular day’s traffic, which was paralysed due to floods.
But how did they connect floods and urban planning, you ask? The answer lies in a story that begins with the ‘Changemaker Missions’ that the students of Sparkling Mindz embark on as part of their curriculum.
These missions allow the children to apply their learnings in the “here-and-now” to solve real-world problems. One such mission is ‘TRUI: Tinker, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, Upcycle, and Innovate’, under which they are circling from questions to answers and back to more questions to crack open .
To strategise their actions for these missions, the students rely on a design-thinking process called the ‘Problems to Projects’ or ‘P2P’. This model equips the stakeholders (the students) with the skills and knowledge needed to tackle the issue. It has eight stages: gather, map, empathise, define, ideate, test and prototype, operations, and marketing/showcase/evaluation.
The children have also launched weekly heritage walks around the city, held every Sunday and open to everyone.
“It’s not a top-down approach. They arrive at things,” Sreeja explains.
To take the first step to positively change and its calamities, they began with preschoolers, who were asked to let their thoughts about Bengaluru roam uncaged on a sheet of paper. The drawings were full of aversive thought bubbles like, “Go away, says Bengaluru”, “Pothole city!”, and “Too many people, too much pollution”.
It was clear that the children only had a surface-level connection with their city, and that drove all the apathy. “That was not going to help them become change agents. Football ground, apartment park, apartment friends, and school — this was all they could imagine when they thought about Bengaluru.” Sreeja says.
Sreeja and the team quickly decided to take them on trips around the city, which came to be known as ‘Child in the City’ walks. The Unicorns also accompanied them. They were also taken to lakes, with Jakkur Lake being an often-visited site.
While the younger children worked on expanding their horizons about the city, Bengaluru was hit with a water crisis, with lake rejuvenation efforts already in the works. So the Unicorns made no ado in rushing to experts and stakeholders with their questions.
“We spoke to farmers, environmentalists, hydrologists, people at the Bangalore Development Authority, and local volunteers — a lot of people who were stakeholders in lake rejuvenation. We even interviewed the team at a sustainable design firm to understand the role that construction and urban planning have to play. We also studied the work done by Jala Poshan, a citizen participation programme, to rejuvenate Jakkur Lake, and we were so fascinated with the impact that common people can bring about,” Mihika shares.
The insights from these conversations came together, with threads of information carefully untangled. Patterns were identified, and scripts were crafted. Armed with powerful messages, the students stepped out to give the lake a voice.
“We did a show for our annual day which was presented in Jakkur Lake’s own voice in the context of the water crisis, Jakkur being an example of the city’s lakes. It was called ‘Bengaluru, Once a City of Lakes’, and we depicted the and lakes in general for our city. We performed it at different places across the city. It even had a dance!” Simran, a student, recalls.
The impact of the work did not end there. It manifested again in the form of footfall for their Saturday morning awareness workshops and stalls. “The children have also launched weekly heritage walks around the city, held every Sunday and open to everyone. These walks offer a chance to rediscover Bengaluru’s hidden heritage through landmarks like Ulsoor Lake, Cubbon Park, and Nandi Durg. They have even prepared treasure cues to make the experience more engaging, and taken the lead in getting all this done,” Sreeja says with a proud smile.
Sparkling Mindz students were just in the midst of performing snippets of Bengaluru, Once a City of Lakes in different corners of the city. “It was like we were translating the lake’s emotions into human language,” Sabreesh, another student, says. His benchmate, Nikhil, adds that they had even started work in the school, like creating recharge pits and making arrangements for water harvesting, to make sure that they were water-sufficient in the face of another water crisis.
But who knew that not many months later, they would be listening to Mihika share her story about how floods in the city made her miss her Trinity exam.
As part of the TRUI changemaker mission, students aim to crack open grassroots solutions to the water crisis and the floods.
“By then, we knew that this was all part of a larger problem. It was time for interviews again,” Mihika says. Out came the same notepads they had used during . However, a new page and some new questions saw the students scratching their heads on their way to meet the experts.
“They went to the same people, but the questions were very differently mapped. The approach was entirely new and much deeper than the last time,” Sreeja recalls.
Dr A N Yellappa Reddy, a renowned environmentalist and former IFS officer, would tell the students, “Water needs space to walk, crawl, jump, hop, and trickle in the city. Today, it only runs; and it runs off.”
He would further point out that 95% of water in Bengaluru now runs off, a stark increase compared to the 15-20% just a few years ago. Sreeja continues, “In the past, the ground was not paved, and construction materials were permeable. With urbanisation, however, a concrete jungle has emerged, leaving no space for water to seep into the ground.”
“Where will the water go, then?” Dr Reddy had asked.
And so began the entangling and detangling of more threads. The students had the arduous task of connecting the dots between the water crisis and the floods.
Lakshita, a student, observed a distinct connection between their school coursework and the questions they were trying to find answers to. “In special science, we learned about the types of rain. Our science curriculum helped us understand Bengaluru’s layout and the materials it was built with. For measuring rain, we turned to maths. And to understand people’s perspectives, social science came to the rescue,” she says, her eyes gleaming as she draws the parallels.
The result of this “thinking out loud,” as the students put it, was a detailed causal map that they made to summarise their interview outcomes. In the centre of the map was a question written in a sizable font: “Why is it flooding so much?”
The result of this “thinking out loud,” as the students put it, was a detailed causal map that they made to summarise their interview outcomes.
“I want to sneak you in on what we are planning next!” Archita exclaims. “Soon, you’ll see short articles on LinkedIn and other social media platforms about the solutions we’ve developed through our research. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Our findings have uncovered insights that aren’t common knowledge. We want to create far-reaching change that is by the children, for the children, and of the children.”
Nikhil smiles ear to ear as he says, “These articles will be such interesting reads because you will get a glimpse into how children experience and tackle problems as complex as floods.”
Sparkling Mindz is one school, and Bengaluru is one city. “But we do have something larger on the horizon. What we plan to do has three layers to it. First, we aim to build , universities, and learning centres across the country that share the belief that knowledge can be gained on the go and that you don’t need to be an expert to solve a problem,” says Sreeja.
Sparkling Mindz students conduct workshops and stalls to raise environmental awareness.
“Second, I have a good feeling about multi-city functioning, where students from different cities coordinate through P2P labs to tackle region-specific challenges — such as air pollution in Delhi — in a low-stakes environment. Third, we plan to create a broad network of experts to equip students with the skills to ask the right questions,” she explains.
As another Saturday morning approaches, the students will wrap up their busy morning routine and head to the lakeside. The first rays of sunlight will dance on the water’s surface, their golden glow reflected in the students’ eager eyes.
The lake will stir gently with the quiet ripples of change these young hands and hearts begin to create.
Edited by Pranita Bhat; All images courtesy Sreeja Iyer
These students have lately been mastering a balancing act. They spend hours drawing parallels between the water crisis that hit Bengaluru this summer and the just a month ago. The contrast is stark enough to raise some eyebrows and many questions.
Thanks to the curriculum at their school, these students know how to ask the right questions.
Thanks to the curriculum at their school, these students know how to ask the right questions like the back of their hand. “When adversity strikes, it affects a child in different ways. It can make them feel helpless. Hence, there is a need for purpose-driven action where children can see beyond themselves,” Sreeja Iyer, founder and CEO of Sparkling Mindz, tells The Better India.
With the contrast in question, it made perfect sense for Sreeja and the students to look at the challenge in a holistic sense. And so, they started peeling back the layers. Here’s how the students are charting (and even implementing!) solutions to navigate the thin line between the lack and abundance of water in Bengaluru.
From curiosity to clarity: Unpacking Bengaluru’s water woes
But first, it’s worth pondering: Why have school students set out to solve water issues? Don’t they have their theory lessons to revise?
Well, their efforts are a natural extension of the ethos of Sparkling Mindz, which defines itself as a “progressive, child-centric alternate school”. And the institution is giving them all the right practical assignments.
At Sparkling Mindz, students aged between 14 and 17 are called ‘Unicorns’, the highest level in the school’s age-based hierarchy. The journey starts with toddlers as ‘Guppies’ and progresses through ‘Pups’, ‘Calves’, ‘Cubs’, ‘Joeys’, ‘Dolphins’, ‘Leopards’, and ‘Falcons’, culminating in the ‘Unicorns’.
As the Unicorns pull out some data from their recent work, Sreeja explains that it’s not unusual for Bengaluru to face such , but the problem lies in how young people view it from a very surface level. In the city’s attempt to safeguard its vulnerable, they are just given a holiday from school.
“But in that act of protection, who is addressing their reactions towards these calamities? This compelled our children to wonder: And why are most kids indifferent towards it?” she says.
“The urban planning of our city impacts our lives so much. We want children to understand what’s happening to their city,” says Aashna, a student.
Aashna Sankar, a student, observes a profound gap in access to comprehensible information that kids can rely on to frame an understanding of such issues and thus change their mindsets. “Don’t children deserve to know? Don’t children have a voice? The urban planning of our city impacts our lives so much, but we don’t have a say in it. We want children to understand what is happening to their city.” She gasps for breath as she emphasises ‘ ’.
The planning issue further tickled the curiosity of the students when Mihika Jain, a 16-year-old student at their school, missed her Trinity Communication Skills Exam because of that particular day’s traffic, which was paralysed due to floods.
But how did they connect floods and urban planning, you ask? The answer lies in a story that begins with the ‘Changemaker Missions’ that the students of Sparkling Mindz embark on as part of their curriculum.
These missions allow the children to apply their learnings in the “here-and-now” to solve real-world problems. One such mission is ‘TRUI: Tinker, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, Upcycle, and Innovate’, under which they are circling from questions to answers and back to more questions to crack open .
To strategise their actions for these missions, the students rely on a design-thinking process called the ‘Problems to Projects’ or ‘P2P’. This model equips the stakeholders (the students) with the skills and knowledge needed to tackle the issue. It has eight stages: gather, map, empathise, define, ideate, test and prototype, operations, and marketing/showcase/evaluation.
The children have also launched weekly heritage walks around the city, held every Sunday and open to everyone.
“It’s not a top-down approach. They arrive at things,” Sreeja explains.
To take the first step to positively change and its calamities, they began with preschoolers, who were asked to let their thoughts about Bengaluru roam uncaged on a sheet of paper. The drawings were full of aversive thought bubbles like, “Go away, says Bengaluru”, “Pothole city!”, and “Too many people, too much pollution”.
It was clear that the children only had a surface-level connection with their city, and that drove all the apathy. “That was not going to help them become change agents. Football ground, apartment park, apartment friends, and school — this was all they could imagine when they thought about Bengaluru.” Sreeja says.
Sreeja and the team quickly decided to take them on trips around the city, which came to be known as ‘Child in the City’ walks. The Unicorns also accompanied them. They were also taken to lakes, with Jakkur Lake being an often-visited site.
While the younger children worked on expanding their horizons about the city, Bengaluru was hit with a water crisis, with lake rejuvenation efforts already in the works. So the Unicorns made no ado in rushing to experts and stakeholders with their questions.
Bridging gaps, one conversation at a time
“We spoke to farmers, environmentalists, hydrologists, people at the Bangalore Development Authority, and local volunteers — a lot of people who were stakeholders in lake rejuvenation. We even interviewed the team at a sustainable design firm to understand the role that construction and urban planning have to play. We also studied the work done by Jala Poshan, a citizen participation programme, to rejuvenate Jakkur Lake, and we were so fascinated with the impact that common people can bring about,” Mihika shares.
The insights from these conversations came together, with threads of information carefully untangled. Patterns were identified, and scripts were crafted. Armed with powerful messages, the students stepped out to give the lake a voice.
“We did a show for our annual day which was presented in Jakkur Lake’s own voice in the context of the water crisis, Jakkur being an example of the city’s lakes. It was called ‘Bengaluru, Once a City of Lakes’, and we depicted the and lakes in general for our city. We performed it at different places across the city. It even had a dance!” Simran, a student, recalls.
The impact of the work did not end there. It manifested again in the form of footfall for their Saturday morning awareness workshops and stalls. “The children have also launched weekly heritage walks around the city, held every Sunday and open to everyone. These walks offer a chance to rediscover Bengaluru’s hidden heritage through landmarks like Ulsoor Lake, Cubbon Park, and Nandi Durg. They have even prepared treasure cues to make the experience more engaging, and taken the lead in getting all this done,” Sreeja says with a proud smile.
Sparkling Mindz students were just in the midst of performing snippets of Bengaluru, Once a City of Lakes in different corners of the city. “It was like we were translating the lake’s emotions into human language,” Sabreesh, another student, says. His benchmate, Nikhil, adds that they had even started work in the school, like creating recharge pits and making arrangements for water harvesting, to make sure that they were water-sufficient in the face of another water crisis.
But who knew that not many months later, they would be listening to Mihika share her story about how floods in the city made her miss her Trinity exam.
As part of the TRUI changemaker mission, students aim to crack open grassroots solutions to the water crisis and the floods.
“By then, we knew that this was all part of a larger problem. It was time for interviews again,” Mihika says. Out came the same notepads they had used during . However, a new page and some new questions saw the students scratching their heads on their way to meet the experts.
“They went to the same people, but the questions were very differently mapped. The approach was entirely new and much deeper than the last time,” Sreeja recalls.
Dr A N Yellappa Reddy, a renowned environmentalist and former IFS officer, would tell the students, “Water needs space to walk, crawl, jump, hop, and trickle in the city. Today, it only runs; and it runs off.”
He would further point out that 95% of water in Bengaluru now runs off, a stark increase compared to the 15-20% just a few years ago. Sreeja continues, “In the past, the ground was not paved, and construction materials were permeable. With urbanisation, however, a concrete jungle has emerged, leaving no space for water to seep into the ground.”
“Where will the water go, then?” Dr Reddy had asked.
Ripples of change: Turning ideas into action
And so began the entangling and detangling of more threads. The students had the arduous task of connecting the dots between the water crisis and the floods.
Lakshita, a student, observed a distinct connection between their school coursework and the questions they were trying to find answers to. “In special science, we learned about the types of rain. Our science curriculum helped us understand Bengaluru’s layout and the materials it was built with. For measuring rain, we turned to maths. And to understand people’s perspectives, social science came to the rescue,” she says, her eyes gleaming as she draws the parallels.
The result of this “thinking out loud,” as the students put it, was a detailed causal map that they made to summarise their interview outcomes. In the centre of the map was a question written in a sizable font: “Why is it flooding so much?”
The result of this “thinking out loud,” as the students put it, was a detailed causal map that they made to summarise their interview outcomes.
“I want to sneak you in on what we are planning next!” Archita exclaims. “Soon, you’ll see short articles on LinkedIn and other social media platforms about the solutions we’ve developed through our research. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Our findings have uncovered insights that aren’t common knowledge. We want to create far-reaching change that is by the children, for the children, and of the children.”
Nikhil smiles ear to ear as he says, “These articles will be such interesting reads because you will get a glimpse into how children experience and tackle problems as complex as floods.”
Sparkling Mindz is one school, and Bengaluru is one city. “But we do have something larger on the horizon. What we plan to do has three layers to it. First, we aim to build , universities, and learning centres across the country that share the belief that knowledge can be gained on the go and that you don’t need to be an expert to solve a problem,” says Sreeja.
Sparkling Mindz students conduct workshops and stalls to raise environmental awareness.
“Second, I have a good feeling about multi-city functioning, where students from different cities coordinate through P2P labs to tackle region-specific challenges — such as air pollution in Delhi — in a low-stakes environment. Third, we plan to create a broad network of experts to equip students with the skills to ask the right questions,” she explains.
As another Saturday morning approaches, the students will wrap up their busy morning routine and head to the lakeside. The first rays of sunlight will dance on the water’s surface, their golden glow reflected in the students’ eager eyes.
The lake will stir gently with the quiet ripples of change these young hands and hearts begin to create.
Edited by Pranita Bhat; All images courtesy Sreeja Iyer