Country of Residence
United States
Age
18
Project title
The Know Your Water Initiative
Project Summary: Describe your project in one sentence
Know Your Water is a youth-led initiative I started that makes water and climate education engaging, accessible, and action-oriented through hands-on lessons, engaging games, and community programming that help K–12 students understand the water challenges around them and see themselves as part of the solution.
Website URL(s) or social media handles.
https://www.instagram.com/nationalcleanwatercollective/, https://www.instagram.com/ncwcyouthcouncil/, https://linktr.ee/Nationalcleanwatercollective?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAcGRvZgJzcnRjBmFwcF9pZA85M
Project Category
My project is an existing project that I started
Project Stage
Pilot-Stage (We’ve tried an activity or two)
Founding Story: What was the spark that led you to start your project? What was the "Aha!" moment that led you to get started and see the potential for this to succeed?
My idea for Know Your Water grew from seeing just how many different stories can begin with something as simple as water. Through the NCWC Youth Council, I was exposed to projects approaching water from completely different angles. Nourish Ozone, our community garden, explores sustainability and the connection between water, food, and community. The Poison to Prison Pipeline examines lead exposure, aging infrastructure, and remediation in New York City schools, showing how environmental conditions can shape health and opportunity. Through Journalists for Clean Water, we follow and communicate water news, from contamination and climate disasters to policy and emerging solutions. Our social media and events planning teams supports our initiatives. Working across these projects made something click for me: these issues are deeply connected, but young people rarely get the chance to see the full picture. Students may learn the water cycle, yet never learn why lead can end up in a school drinking fountain, how climate change affects their water supply, or who makes decisions about the infrastructure beneath their community. That realization became Know Your Water. I wanted to create an engaging way for students to connect the science of water with climate, equity, technology, policy, and their own lives, then give them the tools to do something with what they learn.
The Problem: What problem are you helping to solve? Why does it matter to you and your community?
Water is essential to every community, yet billions of people still lack safe access to it, and young people are rarely taught to understand why. In 2024, 2.1 billion people, roughly 1 in 4 worldwide, lacked safely managed drinking water. The World Health Organization now warns that the world is “dangerously off track” to achieve the UN’s 2030 goal of safe water and sanitation for all. Climate change is making the challenge even more urgent, intensifying drought, flooding, contamination, and pressure on aging infrastructure. Yet many students still encounter water mainly through the water cycle or basic conservation lessons. They may never learn why lead can appear in school drinking water, why some neighborhoods bear greater environmental risks, how infrastructure and policy shape access, or what solutions already exist. That education gap is becoming especially important in New York. Beginning in fall 2027, New York State will require climate education, creating a major need for engaging, classroom-ready resources. NYC Public Schools is already building toward this shift, with more than 1,200 schools participating in Climate Action Days in 2024–25. Know Your Water helps fill that gap by turning water from an abstract topic into an issue students can understand, question, and act on.
Your Solution: How are you solving this problem? Share your specific solution.
Know Your Water turns complex water and climate issues into interactive learning experiences that K–12 students can understand, remember, and act on. Our curriculum is organized around five themes: why water matters; water equity and environmental justice; water and climate change; innovation and solutions; and youth action. Students explore issues such as water scarcity, pollution, lead exposure, aging infrastructure, drought and flooding, unequal access to clean water, conservation, filtration, desalination, smart water technology, and the role of public policy. Instead of relying on lectures, we use real-world case studies, sourced photographs, discussion prompts, reflection questions, hands-on activities, and original educational card games. In the games, students work through realistic water challenges, make decisions, compare possible solutions, and see how choices about infrastructure, resources, and policy can affect communities differently. We are expanding this work through Water Education Week, which gives schools, libraries, youth organizations, and community partners a ready-to-use way to bring water education directly to students. Our materials are modular, so a teacher can use one activity in a class period, while another organization can run a full workshop or week of programming. We are also developing facilitator guides and age-adapted materials so the program can be used without requiring specialized water expertise. Our goal is not simply for students to memorize facts. We want them to leave able to recognize a water challenge in their own community, understand the systems behind it, evaluate possible solutions, and identify a meaningful way they can participate.
Impact: How has your project created impact / made a difference so far? Or, if at an early stage, what will impact look like?
Know Your Water is still in its growth stage, but we are already seeing meaningful institutional traction. Our team has partnered with the NYC Office of Sustainability and met with NYC Public Schools to explore formal implementation of Know Your Water in schools. We have also connected with Mayor Zohran Mamdani and are exploring another opportunity to meet with him about the initiative and its potential in New York City. We have represented the project at multiple environmental events and summits, using those spaces to build partnerships, gather feedback, and raise awareness around water and climate literacy. We have also brought on Kiley, a master’s student at Columbia University, as a Volunteer Education Advisor. With experience in environmental education, curriculum development, and research, she is helping strengthen Know Your Water’s educational quality and ensure our materials are engaging, age-appropriate, and useful for educators. Our next milestone is turning this momentum into direct student impact by piloting our curriculum and card games, measuring changes in knowledge and confidence, and building a model that can eventually reach classrooms across New York City and beyond.
Your Innovation: What is different about your project compared to other programs or solutions already out there? How is your project new or innovative?
What makes Know Your Water different is that it is designed by young people, for young people. Many water and climate education programs are created for students by adults. We approach the problem from the perspective of the students actually receiving the information. Because we are young people ourselves, we understand what makes a lesson feel engaging, what makes it feel disconnected, and what helps an issue become memorable enough to care about. However, we are still guided by adults and professionals. That shapes everything we create. Instead of relying only on presentations or worksheets, we use discussion, real-world examples, hands-on activities, and original educational games that let students make decisions, weigh tradeoffs, and work through realistic water challenges themselves. We also connect topics that are often taught separately. Students do not just learn about conservation or the water cycle. They explore how water intersects with climate change, environmental justice, aging infrastructure, technology, public policy, and civic action. A lesson can move from lead in school drinking water to infrastructure decisions, possible remediation, and the role students and communities can play. Our model is also built for replication. Teachers, libraries, and organizations can use individual activities or a full Water Education Week program without needing specialized water expertise, and a member of the council can easily connect with them for setup. Most importantly, youth are not treated as passive recipients of information. We research the issues, develop the curriculum, design the games, build partnerships, and shape how the project grows. Know Your Water does not simply teach young people that their voices matter; it is built to prove it.
How many people are on your team?
40
Your team: What role(s) do your team members play? How do you share leadership with them?
Our ~40-member team includes an Executive Chairman, Youth Council Executive Director and Assistant Director, with me serving as Team Lead for Know Your Water. Leadership is shared across the council: members contribute based on their strengths in curriculum development, research and fact-checking, outreach, educational design, and game development. This structure gives young people real ownership while keeping the project collaborative and coordinated.
What’s Next: What are the next steps you plan to take to grow or strengthen your project over the next year? If your project is still in the idea stage, describe the steps you will take over the next three months to launch or begin developing it.
Over the next year, our focus is turning Know Your Water into a polished, scalable program that schools and community organizations can easily adopt. Our first priority is expanding outreach and partnerships, especially with NYC Public Schools, the NYC Office of Sustainability, libraries, youth organizations, and environmental groups. We want to move from early conversations into pilot programs and recurring implementation. We also plan to invest in the quality of our educational materials. Funding would help us professionally print our card games and hands-on activities, strengthen visual design, create durable classroom-ready resources, and develop materials that feel engaging and credible to both students and educators. At the same time, we will continue refining our curriculum with support from our Education Advisor and feedback from teachers and students. We plan to test activities in real classrooms, collect pre- and post-program feedback, and use those results to improve what we teach and how we teach it. Longer term, we want to build a complete Water Education Week toolkit that schools can use independently, allowing Know Your Water to grow beyond our own team and eventually reach students across New York City and other communities.
How do you encourage other people to join your project or learn about the problem you’re working on? If you have a new idea, tell us how you will do this in the future.
We encourage people to join by giving them a real role in the work, not just asking them to support it from the sidelines. I have personally brought on 3 members to contribute regularly to Know Your Water and the National Clean Water Collective. Depending on their interests and strengths, they have helped with curriculum development, research and fact-checking, outreach, educational design, and game development. Giving people ownership over a specific part of the project makes their involvement more meaningful and helps the initiative grow beyond one person. We also introduce new audiences to water issues through events, summits, school outreach, partnerships, social media, and our educational programming. Rather than presenting water as a distant environmental issue, we connect it to things people already experience: their schools, neighborhoods, climate, health, and infrastructure. As we expand Water Education Week, we want to activate even more students, educators, and youth leaders by giving them ready-to-use lessons, games, and activities they can bring into their own communities. Our goal is to create a ripple effect where participants do not just learn about water challenges, but become people who help teach, organize, and lead around them.
