Aajwanthi Baradwaj joined Biome Environmental Trust as an intern, and worked on a project titled ‘Agents of Change’, through which she tried to bring about behavioural change in children through community participation. The project aimed at spreading water literacy in rural Karnataka, where fluoride is endemic in groundwater and people are not aware of the problems that are caused by drinking this water.

The design process involved facilitating a series of participatory workshops to build awareness around water and sanitation, focusing on fluoride for high school students in a rural government school. The children were taken through these workshops, during which they performed activities that put abstract concepts that they had only read about in their textbooks into action. The workshops also demonstrated that drinking rainwater is the only way to prevent fluorosis, an incurable disease caused by drinking water with excess fluoride. This was done by building fun experiences around factual matter.

Aajwanthi translated this journey into a toolkit that makes awareness programmes and learning more hands-on, interdisciplinary, fun and emotional. This 60-page illustrated, four colour printed toolkit contains all the visual aids needed to facilitate participatory activities to spread awareness on water and sanitation. The activities themselves are direct and objective but the toolkit also contains anecdotes and insights that were drawn from the workshops she conducted in Rashtrapragathi Higher Public school in rural Karnataka. It comes with a 9 min 30 sec participatory video that the students have shot themselves, telling people stories about their problems around fluoride and what they have learnt and liked about these activities. This serves as a quick way to imbibe all the content.

Aajwanthi has also created a brief presentation that gives a quick overview of the project and written a series of blog posts about her experiences during the design process of the project.