Garvita, India’s Water Girl, began her journey as a changemaker at the age of 13. In the year 2015, deeply impacted by the water crisis India faced, she founded Why Waste?, with the aim of changing people’s mindsets towards water by building simple solutions to solve the global water crisis. Today they are India’s largest youth led organisation working towards the effective conservation of water.
Why Waste? began working with restaurants by helping them prevent wastage of water that is left behind in glasses through their viral #GlassHalfFull movement in addition to conducting workshops. Their work has reached over 5 lakh restaurants, 10 million people and prevented over 6 million liters of water from being wasted. Most recently the team published “The Sustainability Stories”, a for youth, by youth collection of 13 new-age fables that talk about environmental issues and inspire children to be the change. The team published the books in partnership with Pratham, India’s largest non-profit publishers and are now bringing these to life on video with UNICEF. Late last year they also launched the Why Waste? App that helps every individual calculate their water footprint and helps them save at least 100 litres of water every single day through a gamified approach. In partnership with CNN, Why Waste? Is building this very movement to encourage more people to calculate their water footprint and become part of the change through their national campaign “Mission Paani”.
Beyond this, Garvita represents the voice of youth and works deeply towards involving more youth in changemaking through her work with Global Organizations including Facebook, Ashoka, Google, IKEA and Global Changemakers. With Ashoka, she launched the Lead Young at schools program in India which is now reaching over 800 schools and 2.5 million students across India, inspiring them to be Changemakers through the art of storytelling. She sits on the Youth Board of the State of Youth, a virtual nation for everyone below the age of 24 advocating for the SDGs.Garvita is also a Global Changemaker, Ashoka Young Changemaker,Change.org fellow and EarthDay fellow. Most recently Garvita was the youngest lister on the Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia-Pacific list of Social Entrepreneurs. She is currently an engineering student and is also a professional classical dancer and calligraphy artist.
