What is RainReach?
Rain Reach is a program of eco-education and water literacy for schoolchildren. We are working with 12 schools for the under-represented of the City Corporation in Bengaluru. This Academic Year 2024 has 1-school-a-week for 50 weeks.
Our Mission is Education of Children to ensure water conservation becomes a habit and makes them resilient, understand what they can do to solve the water problem on their own.
We present the story to the children with water games, sharing of experiences from water mentors who visit the schools, enrols the teachers on the vision, guides children and teachers to take a Water Pledge every month.
The RainReach mission is also to take Education on water to parents, and through the children and their videos and visits to neighbouring buildings to decision makers who can adopt these practices of Net Zero Water.
How can children learn how to save sensibly, how to recycle, harvest and manage the water cycle?
How can we build a generation of water-wise young Indians? How can our schools and children inspire other neighboring buildings, homes and offices.
RainReach guides with constant contact and help for the children.
We take to schools simple measures that help them understand how we need to treasure water. As children grow into becoming adults some day, water will need to be entirely differently addressed is a lesson that will be embedded in them. It encourages learning-by-doing for the senior schoolchildren, of age 12-16 years, with support from teachers and water industry volunteers or Water Mentors.
Aim is to reach 50 schools in Bangalore. That is a start. This will lay the ground for a larger multi-city initiative.
All this depends, dear reader, on how we all work together – water mentors, faculty, and children. You can be part of this mission. Virtually from wherever you are, or by your donating time on one Saturday every month.
Join the movement. Do your bit to build strength in the next generation.
How can you engage and put a smile on the faces of these children?
Join As Volunteer
You can join in as volunteers and Water Mentors. All you need to do is ‘donate’ one Saturday a month for one school. You visit the school, you meet the teachers, the school children
Learning
The core team of experts will spend time with you to offer you a simple primer on the how’s and what’s of rainwater harvesting, and the very basic mathematics of capture of rains on the roofs to every 1000 Sft.
Interaction
Your skills at stimulating their ability to think, and work as a team is all that we need. And as you interact with the teachers and the students you will learn quickly on how you can have them learn by doing just as you learn yourself.
Refer
You could help by getting friends to ‘adopt’ a school. The work in one school costs an average of about Rs 5 lac depending on the size of the school. You could have small contributions in multiples of Rs 1000 that you could make.
Rain Reach : Learning by Doing
It encourages learning by doing for kids of age 9-15 years with support from teachers and water industry volunteers or Water Mentors.
Rain Reach at a school has four hardware components …
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Installation of a rainwater harvest (RWH) system with filtrations system to turn rainwater to safe, high-hygiene drinking water.
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A net zero sanitation system to ensure all gray water, black water, and urine is treated and reused within the school campus.
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Installing of a rain gauge weather station to help kids learn how to measure rainfall, data-log and understand its correlation to rainwater harvested.
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A digital flow meter for capturing and sharing data on water harvested every rain-day with kids/teachers/citizens across the city.
Seven software components
The key is the six activities that commence after the physical installations are done... Managing the operational dynamic of these six activities is at the centre of Rain Reach’s success.
01
Mobilising Water Volunteers or Mentors to offer time at the school one Saturday a month.
02
Water experts talking to teachers / children every fortnight with offline and online gatherings to discuss the rainwater captured, the rainfall received, conservation measures adopted and imbibed in families of parents beyond the school
03
Galvanising surveys of water use patterns among buildings in the neighbourhood with the senior school children leading the survey campaigns
04
Neighbourhood campaigns for accelerating adoption of water practices by offering them simple metrics of savings in energy and carbon apart from long term water security
05
Getting partner schools from across other schools with ‘more privileged kids’ from Bangalore, from other Indian cities, and from other cultures and countries … to widen horizon of thinking and to sensitise these school-children to Earth’s concerns
06
Getting children to learn by doing with the hardware in place for the school. The children lead and maintain themselves. They learn to fix. They understand how much water they need, and how it can be stored and provided at the school.
07
They learn how borewells damage the environment. They learn the equation with rains and our water use. They learn to understand where water is sourced, stored, distributed and sensibly recycled, and not just wasted away.
The Roadmap to ‘RainReaching’ Schools
We aim to reach 50 schools in Bangalore. That is a start. But that is a large and formidable initiative and will take 2 to 3 years, and will depend on how we all work together – water mentors, faculty, and children. Depending on the number of children in a school, the ‘software’ of interaction with the teachers and the children has to evolve creatively over months of such meetings with them.
Mission
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Education of children through RainReach to ensure water conservation becomes a habit and solves the water problem by the next generation. We have and will have more nice pictures to showcase this effort.
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Providing Water for the poor so that water inequities can be wiped out by the next generation.
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Education on water for children, for adults, for technical people, in water and
in technologies for treating water or harnessing water…
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Get children to learn how to save sensibly, how to recycle, harvest and manage the water cycle. Build a generation of water-wise people.
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Showcase to other neighbouring buildings and homes and offices in the area where the school is located. Guiding with constant contact and help for the children.
Collaborating Partners
Rain Reach has excited the interest of many city leaders who are lay people but discerning. There are chartered accountants and doctors who want to be water mentors.
There are students of engineering and architecture, or BSc and BCom graduates or MBAs and BBAs who want to work with the children, and enjoy the process of getting these school kids to think, to learn by doing with their hands.
From across the world we have institutions like these to be collaborating with us… Some of them want to bring children from schools in THEIR cities to join online meetings with our school kids. Some others want to help us with fund-raising. Others are helping us take this powerful message of RainReach to common people and professionals who are part of their institutions.
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CUNY in New York City.
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GlobalWaterWorks in Illinois.
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Building Communities of Trust, Northwestern University, Illinois
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International Centre for Clean Water at IITM.
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INHAF India.
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Prem Jain Memorial Trust
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Indian Plumbing Association.
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Indian Green Building Council.