Healthy Environment & Life Planning for KIDS (Help.KIDS)

Tackling 'Climate change' with a participatory approach is the key element of HelpKIDS. Considering children are the future stakeholders and better learning of stewardship, Help.KIDS brings children closer to climate change issues and trains them to appreciate nature-based climate change solutions. Planting a tree by a child - is a significant achievement that keeps the child focused on bringing more minor changes at a local level. Cultivating this practice of 'grow with your trees' has a ripple effect on a more significant community-based approach to restoring the micro-environment and retrofitting urban and rural spatial conditions, which has a measurable impact on the environment. 

'Grow with your trees' is a sense-making of growing a child while keeping promises to help his/her trees grow and, subsequently, both the micro- and macro-environment. This is a community-based challenge for a neighbourhood-level approach to restore the environment by contributing one tree per child to the earth.

Greeing cities and countryside will change the environment positively. They will affect the health and well-being of the children by purifying the air and bringing simple ideas to combat climate change, a daily task for children.

We have a grassroots voluntary member - spreading across Bangladesh. They help organise tree planting workshops at the primary school level. 

Help-KIDS is an easy way to communicate with younger generations in easy, fun, and collaborative ways, and that has been applied with no problems. The only problem is buying trees; I currently ask sponsors to donate trees.

We are running zero-expense workshop and community engagement, and we are free from obligation of accounting. Nevertheless, we would be happy to have more negligible support so that a stable organisation could be formed with smaller team members who can run with minimum expenses for mobility, recording of tasks, and buying trees.

Two reasons for applying to MIT Solve:

1. Recognition of the HELP.KIDS

2. Funding for broader community-based workshops.

HelpKIDS is a community-based approach, which is very easy to understand by laypersons and quickly grasp the simple techniques of promoting environmental conservation in the rapid urbanisation in Bangladesh and many Asian and Latin American cities.

The solution is innovative, communicating efficiently with a broader community after 10 to 15 minutes of conversations.

Planting your own trees involves teamwork and a collective notion of building a greener community. It has ripple effects on adjacent communities that are willing to follow the culture of appreciating greeneries. The initiative is free from governmental dependencies, and the methods can be replicated in any place regardless of the socio-political conditions. 

Retrofitting empty brownfields by planting trees is a simple but effective solution to preserve the natural balance of a city.

Rapid urbanisation makes the environmental footprint in a developing nation more significant, and HelpKIDS pledges to cover it in smaller steps to bring green solutions.

The impact is visible and measurable by the participants, as they communicate with our teams about how well they are taking care of their plants, which have their signature and become a milestone task in the community.

We wish to create a QR code for each tree, and monitor lively the p progress by using interactive digital platform, and a website where the information will be gathered, This is possible by some helo from MIT SOLVE.

There is no technology currently, as tree planting is a place-based solution that involves participating in person. However, I wish to upgrade the initiative to QR code-based monitoring of the progress of each child and their partnering trees. The information on the health of trees will be generated data, and then it can be published on the web page or social media, where the public can view it with their owners. This is my following vision.

There are no fixed numbers. Participation is voluntary, and before each workshop and tree-planting initiative, we receive responses from various parties and community extending their help.

Since 2002. First, it was Arch.KIDS (Arch.KIDS | Brac University ) and later, it is running HelpKIDS as a sister organisation. The projects we did mainly related to environmental conservation and more than just planting trees.

Our team is flexible, diverse, and there is no commitment,

Therefore, it is easy to form a team as the project goes on.

There is no business model, but HelpKIDS and its sister organisation, ArchKIDS, space itself with new agendas, most of which are not business-oriented. Therefore, the two setups run in its system, and due to the freedom to move around in many parts of Bangladesh, Scotland, Spain and India, the flexibility allows it to survive its model.

I need recognition from MIT SOLVE and a small financial drivers so I can do the following:

1. permanent website for HelpKIDS

2. One dedicated researcher will maintain the website, oversee the progress of each workshop, extract information from the workshop, and mobilize new workshops.

3. I need money to create a system for QR codes attached to each tree and connect to the website to generate live data on the health and well-being of each tree. Also, the QR codes will show the children's data as they grow (without personal or sensitive data).

4. Some money is needed to buy small trees for each workshop and prepare and print certificates for children.