On January 14, 2026, the inaugural session of KHPT’s ‘Jal, Jameenu, Janarogya’- a Learning Colloquium Series on Place-Based Community Centric Climate-Health Actionwas held in Bengaluru, to explore the topic of Youth Leadership and Hyperlocal Data repositories to enhance Climate Action.

Recognizing the powerful role and potential of India’s Youth, our invited speaker Kuldeep Dantewadia, Co-founder and CEO of Reap Benefit, shared his personal journey and insights of working with the urban youth – particularly those aged 13-24 years, across different classes and contexts, and the subsequent evolution to the model of ‘Solve Ninjas’ – building public problem-solving skills and nurturing youth champions for place-based civic and climate action.

Kuldeep highlighted Reap Benefit’s model of activating and energizing the youth in hyper-local contexts while generating valuable community-level, crowd sourced data (Samaaj Data) and pathways to bridge the gap between local knowledge and priorities, and governance participation.

The presentation was followed by an hour-long interactive session, that probed into the ways and modalities of engaging India’s youth, bearing in mind that the focus must be on the process and not the outcome – whether they belong to low-income groups or are privileged, or come from a rural or urban background. The session concluded with a meaningful exchange and reflections of the lessons in the adolescent participation and empowerment space while providing insights into the nuances of adolescent realities, aspirations, needs, and wants.