We are delighted to share a blog written by Arushi Lakhanpal, a student at Pathways World School Noida who is part of a team delivering a Global Goals project for the 2018-19 Global Goals Competition.
Their project is among over 620 social action projects currently running as part of the GSL movement and we are excited to be supporting them to design and lead positive social change in their community.
A deeply engaging and enlightening experience, something that helped the community along with us as individuals.
Project Overview
Through primary/secondary research, we were able to discover that almost 24 million Indians are living without electricity; essentially living in the dark. Looking at our own community, it is clear to see the disparity between those who can afford such amenities and those who can’t.
Light is something that we take for granted, something that a lot of people can’t access, and we planned to change that. We wanted to also connect SDG goals to this project, we chose SDG goal 7 and 11 (clean and affordable energy, sustainable cities and communities), which is something that we hoped to integrate in our project.
We initially planned to use solar lights, considering the environment of India, however this turned out to be quite expensive and tedious to implement, and it also required a lot of maintenance, which is why (through some guidance from teachers and feedback from GSL), we decided to also consider implementing bottled lights in homes, that make use of the concept of refraction to spread small amounts of light (from the sun or moon) around the room. This is expanding upon an existing project “Liter of Light”, which we are bringing into our own community.
Our Journey
Obviously, working with such a huge project required a lot of planning and organization beforehand, which was something we all gained in terms of skills, something which will help us not only in the later phases of this project, but also in other aspects of daily life. It has opened us up to so many parts of our own community that we were not even aware of previously, and how much small actions can help them.
Even though we have so many plans, one issue I see is ensuring that we sustain our project, making sure the effect is long-lasting and long-term, overcoming this requires a lot of determination and persistence, which are also a part of the group of skills we developed through participating in GSL.
We have learned a lot about ourselves and each other too, how to use each other’s strengths to our advantage, and help each other improve with their weaknesses. In our opinion, this project not only has the potential to help the community, but also to help us, as individuals.
The Next Chapter
The project that we have taken up is relatively simple, although it has a long-lasting effect. This is something that we can continuously expand and work upon, increasing our scope throughout the community, and expanding our outreach. To other students who wish to take up a similar project, I would recommend planning out everything first, something which is extremely important to ensure the project is effective.
For our own expansion and future plans, we have plans to incorporate other aspects, such as recycling, spreading awareness and others.
With recycling, we want to start a plastic bottle drive in our own school, so that we can receive used bottles and recycle them for our own project, as opposed to letting them go to waste.
We can also spread awareness to those who don’t have knowledge about how the actions of individuals can affect the sustainability of a community (linking it to our chosen SDG goal).
We would also love to contact and team up with a Liter of Light, an organization with similar aims (we were not able to contact them before), so that we can give them our ideas, along with taking their help for our own.
Visit our website: https://lifelights-idu.weebly.com/
The 2018-19 GSL Global Goals Competition is now open and runs until June 2019. If you belong to one of the 700+ teams of students currently delivering a social action project as part of the competition we would love to hear from you and feature your blog and project photos on our website to inspire others.
