Who says they are too young to change the world?

Students of 1,500 schools on their way to becoming protagonists in more than 200 stories.

KARACHI: A lack of security, ineffective governance and inflation has now forced children as young as eight years of age to notice the country’s growing list of problems.

Which is how, working under the banner of Design For Change (DFC), students of 1,500 schools from across the country are currently on their way to becoming the protagonists in more than 200 stories in which they will wage war against some of the country’s basic problems such as unclean water, lack of personal hygiene, traffic violation, beggary, child labour and problems in the education system.

DFC - an idea first conceived and successfully implemented in India - became global this year as its organisers approached around 250,000 students from 50,000 schools from across the world to find solutions to the most challenging problems across the plant. The idea is to address the problems children between the ages of eight and 13 years feel impact their lives the most.

How does DFC work?

DFC approached schools in Pakistan to come up with teams of five children, who were given “how-to” kits. Each team was asked to come up with one idea of how to tackle a problem in their community. With the help of a mentor, these five students have to identify a real problem and implement a solution to the problem within one week. DFC will then pick out the most inspiring stories from each country and share them with the rest of the participants.

DFC-Pakistan’s core team member and global partner Nida Alavi, who is running the project in Pakistan with the help of five other members, said that she was overwhelmed by the encouragement she received when she started interacting with international participants.

“This is the kind of Pakistan the world needs to see. All that we get to see in the country are bomb blasts and floods,” they told her.

“This is what encouraged me to help make the mission successful,” said Alavi, who believed that the world needs to know that “the children of Pakistan are the same as those living anywhere else in the world.”

“What struck me was the simplicity of the idea,” said Natasha Dubash, another member of the team. “Which is why we jumped on it.”

As members of DFC-Pakistan started approaching schools with the idea, they were awestruck and inspired by the number who wished to participate. The Beaconhouse schools, Lahore Grammar School, Behbud Schools, Zindagi Trust Schools as well as educational institutes under the Idara-e-Taleem-o-Agahi (ITA) Network were just some of the organisations who wanted to register with DFC-Pakistan and participate in the global competition.

The participating teams were asked to approach the project in four stages: “Feel, Imagine, Do and Share”. By feeling out a problem, imagining possible solutions, doing what they could to make a change and sharing their stories with the rest of the world, students would become part of an international movement to bring about positive changes in their communities.

According to Dubash, the philosophy had the power to make children decide for themselves, the things that they do not like in their surroundings and work towards changing them into something they saw as right.

“It is to inspire unity and leadership among the children,” said Dubashs enthusiastically.

We had never thought that such young students could submit such ideas, said Alavi as she listed a number of submitted ideas, such as graffiti on walls, planting trees to avoid soil erosion by floods, working with beggar children, wastage of electricity and polluted coastlines.

At the end of the project, 35 prizes will be awarded to winners in November while the most inspiring stories will be presented on the global platform of the United Nations.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 11^th, 2010.