What is RainReach?
Rain Reach is a programme of eco-education and water literacy for schoolchildren. We are working with schools for the under-represented of the Corporation and Government in cities. The Academic Years 2026-2027 will have 50 schools adopted under CSR initiatives and donor funds. The Indian Plumbing Association (IPA) is backing the programme as part of its larger, national initiative for water-resilient futures. Lions’ Club and Rotary Club leaders have also initiated national programmes across cities for achieving Net Zero Water in such schools for the under represented.
What is the Mission?
Our Mission is Education of Children to ensure water conservation becomes a habit and makes them resilient, understand what they can do to solve the water problem on their own.
We present stories to children with water mentors visiting schools, enrolling teachers on the vision, guiding children to take a Water Pledge every month.
RainReach also takes water literacy to parents through children. Videos and visits to neighbouring buildings help other decision makers to adopt practices for Net Zero Water.
How can children learn to save sensibly, how to recycle, harvest and manage the water cycle? How can we build a generation of water-wise young Indians? How can our schools and children inspire other neighboring buildings, homes and offices.
RainReach takes to schools simple measures that help kids understand how we need to manage water smartly. As children grow into becoming adults some day, water will be addressed entirely differently, is a lesson that will be embedded. It encourages learning-by-doing for High School children, of age 12-15 years, with support from teachers and Water Mentors. Volunteers are from Leos from Lions’ Club, Rotarians from Rotary Clubs, students of architecture and engineering and MBA. All this depends on how we all work together – water mentors, faculty, and children. You can be part of this mission. Virtually from wherever you are, or by your donating time on one Saturday every month.
Join the movement. Do your bit to build strength in the next generation.
The equation is:
1000 Sft; 1 year; 1 meter of rainfall; 100,000 litres of clean drinking water.
The Goal is:
To make every school water-positive and grid-free.
The Objective is:
To get young minds to shape their own destiny, with Freedom from the Water Grid in the future.
questions
Key Questions We Address
How can children learn to save water wisely?
How do they recycle, harvest, and manage the water cycle?
How do we build a generation of water-wise young Indians?
How can schools inspire surrounding homes, offices, and buildings?
Join As Volunteer
You can join in as volunteers and Water Mentors. All you need to do is ‘donate’ one Saturday a month for one school. You visit the school, you meet the teachers, the school children
Learning
The core team of experts will spend time with you to offer you a simple primer on the how’s and what’s of rainwater harvesting, and the very basic mathematics of capture of rains on the roofs to every 1000 Sft.
Interaction
Your skills at stimulating their ability to think, and work as a team is all that we need. And as you interact with the teachers and the students you will learn quickly on how you can have them learn by doing just as you learn yourself.
Refer
You could help by getting friends to ‘adopt’ a school. The work in one school costs an average of about Rs 10 lac for a school of 500 children and 2 million litres of water as annual demand.
Rain Reach : Learning by Doing
It encourages learning by doing for kids of age 9-15 years with support from teachers and water industry volunteers or Water Mentors.
Rain Reach at a school has four hardware components.
- Installation of a rainwater harvest (RWH) system with filtration to upgrade to safe, clean drinking water.
- A net zero used-water system to ensure treat-and-reuse.
- A manual rain gauge weather station helps kids learn to measure rainfall, to data-log and understand Connect to Catchment-Collection-Consumption.
- A digital twin for water management with data shared across schools to accelerate learning.
Seven software components
The key is the seven activities that commence after the physical installations are done.
Managing the operational dynamic of these activities is at the centre of RainReach.
1
Mobilising Water Volunteers or Mentors to offer time at the school one Saturday a month.
2
Water experts talking to teachers / children every fortnight with offline and online gatherings to discuss rainwater captured, rainfall received, conservation measures adopted and imbibed in families of parents beyond the school.
3
Galvanising surveys of water use patterns among buildings in the neighbourhood with highschool children leading survey campaigns
4
Neighbourhood campaigns for accelerating adoption of water practices by offering them simple metrics of savings in energy and carbon apart from long term water security
5
Getting other schools with ‘economically privileged kids’ to widen horizon of thinking and to sensitize them.
6
Getting children to learn-by-doing; to understand how much water they need, and how it can be stored and provided at the school.
7
They learn how borewells damage the environment. They learn the equation with rains and our water use. They learn to understand where water is sourced, stored, distributed and sensibly recycled, and not just wasted away.
Hands Across the World
Rain Reach has excited the interest of many city leaders who are lay people but discerning. There are chartered accountants and doctors who want to be water mentors.
There are students of engineering and architecture, or BSc and BCom graduates or MBAs and BBAs who want to work with the children, and enjoy the process of getting these school kids to think, to learn by doing with their hands.
From across the world we have institutions like these to be collaborating with us… Some of them want to bring children from schools in THEIR cities to join online meetings with our school kids. Some others want to help us with fund-raising. Others are helping us take this powerful message of RainReach to common people and professionals who are part of their institutions.
GlobalWaterWorks in Illinois.
Building Communities of Trust, Northwestern University, Illinois
International Centre for Clean Water at IITM.
INHAF India.
Prem Jain Memorial Trust
Indian Plumbing Association.
Indian Green Building Council.