Updates
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Announcing our annual Citizen Journalism programme | Dec 2025
As cities grapple with complex and interlinked challenges, it’s clear that engaged citizens with diverse skills must play a role in shaping solutions. At Oorvani Foundation, we work to empower individuals and communities to move from awareness to action. Our…
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Jury Appreciation for our Associate Editor
Shobana’s four-part series on how unplanned state-led evictions propel domestic violence in resettlement areas of Chennai, has been selected for a Jury Appreciation Citation in the Web – News Series category for English language by the jury of the 15th…
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Cleaning for Change: Lessons from Change-makers Across India
The Oorvani Change Network recently convened its third session, ‘Cleaning for Change’, bringing together civic leaders from Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai to discuss how citizen-led efforts are transforming public spaces. Moderated by Shruti Gokarn, a reporter for Citizen Matters, the…
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Pop culture meets the planet
In the first quarter of 2025, we executed a project in St. Joseph’s University to expose the students to the environmental detriments of Bengaluru due large scale urbanization. That was the first goal. The second was that, students take that…
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Chennai: How to save a lake
Chennai, like many Indian cities, once had a beautiful system for water management. When the water reached the maximum capacity in one lake, it cascaded into the next lake almost seamlessly. As a result of rapid and unplanned urbanisation, today…
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Masterclass: Clean Mumbai starts with you
On 12th September, Oorvani Foundation conducted a masterclass for Mumbaikars with an active interest in waste management, to learn about the waste lifecycle in the city and what they could do to prevent the bulk of their generated waste from…
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Ripples of Change: Community action for revival of waterbodies
After the success of the first event in the series ‘Oorvani Change Network- Learning from the Doers’, part2 of the series focused on waterbody rejuvenation. On 30th August, 2025, we had three individuals from Chennai, Navi Mumbai and Pune share…
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Finding solutions for Mumbai’s urban heat challenges
On June 7th, OpenCity.in in collaboration with the Maharashtra State Climate Action Cell, under the Ministry of Environment, Government of Maharashtra organized and conducted the Mumbai Urban Heat Datajam. This was followed by a workshop for city officials, to empower…
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Community-sourced report: State of Bengaluru Lakes
Despite the critical role of lake ecosystems in urban sustainability, lakes in Bengaluru are in sad shape today. Poor governance, real estate greed and irresponsible civic behaviour have killed many water bodies and pushed the remaining to the brink. Huge…
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Paving the Way: Community Action for Sustainable Urban Mobility
On Friday, July 18, 2025, Oorvani Foundation hosted the first session of ‘Oorvani Change Network – Learning from the Doers’, a series that spotlights changemakers actively shaping their cities. The theme of the first session was urban mobility, and we…
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Citizen Matters reporter gets Laadli fellowship
The Laadli Media Fellowship aims to promote gender-sensitive reporting and support journalists committed to advancing gender equality and social justice. This year’s Fellowship focuses on a critical and often overlooked issue: “Mental Health of Women and Persons with Alternate SOGI…
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Citizen Matters reporter gets selected for CNN Academy’s training program
Voices from the South: Storytelling for Impact is a training program by CNN Academy, designed for emerging journalists from the Global South. Regions across the Global South are often at the forefront of global health crises, yet their stories remain…
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Our co-founder Meera K, wins the Gene Burd Award!
We are thrilled to share that Meera has been chosen for the Gene Burd Award for Excellence in Urban Journalism by Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) & the Urban Communication Foundation. The Gene Burd Award was…
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Oorvani’s summer campaign: Be Part of the Change
For years, we have been your civic knowledge platform, investigating problems, sharing stories of solutions, and helping ordinary people become changemakers in their own neighbourhoods. From organising datajams that empower communities to find solutions to their own problems, to spreading…
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Treated used water: A resource waiting to be tapped
Urban India is increasingly waking up to a pressing reality — water stress is not a future threat; it’s a current crisis. At the heart of this challenge lies not just a scarcity of fresh water, but an under utilization…