Anushka Shahdadpuri is the World Around-Meta Open Arts, Young Climate Prize Fellow 2022 and the WSA-UN Youth Ambassador 2023 for India. She grew up in a refugee colony in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, where the government failed to provide basic infrastructure, and developed ambitions to help others in similar situations access WASH services. Her project, Tanki, is a novel water distribution system, harnessing rainwater to bring one million liters of water a year to public toilets in the city, which has the potential to scale and provide access to clean running water for millions of people.

 

This is particularly important for girls and women in India. Decentralizing the water system could also prevent residents being unjustly charged to use services that are not properly maintained. She is currently a Masters Candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.