In India, governments and public institutions are understaffed compared to the size of the population, leading to inadequate capacity to address civic and climate challenges affecting local communities. Citizen action can contribute to filling in those gaps; however, less than 10% of Indian citizens perceive “being involved in one’s community” as an important responsibility (Janagraha-Brown Citizenship Index data). India’s 350 million youth could constitute a major change-making force, but they lack skills, data and solutions to fix community issues. According to a UNICEF report, 53% of adolescents don’t have 21^st-century skills to solve complex problems, although 84% would be keen to act to address climate change for instance.

Reap Benefit empowers young people to become changemakers and tackle social and environmental issues affecting their local community. They leverage digital platforms to facilitate peer communities, mentoring, behavioural nudges, resource dissemination and hands-on experiences. They empower youths to get involved in issue-specific campaigns like water and sanitation, waste management, air quality, street security, or transversal activities like participation in municipal meetings, providing inputs on policies, and understanding public budgets.

Reap Benefit has enrolled 112,000 youth across 14 states on its platform through the bottom-up approach and reached 458,000 youth through top-down government adoption in four states (Delhi, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab). 

Reap Benefit’s users have so far carried out 105,000 civic actions, recorded 560,000 data points, codified 552 solutions, spearheaded 3,400 local campaigns, and contributed to 10 government policies.