She came across a letter by chance, she decided to walk for a reason by choice. Prachi Shevgaonkar, the founder of ‘Cool the Globe’, is a woman ecopreneur whose purpose in life is to ‘make an impact’ on the carbon emission activities to save the planet.
Prachi Shevgaonkar was an ordinary girl unsure about her future career path until a letter from her childhood inspired her to rise up and ‘make an impact'. Today she is the proud founder of ‘Cool the Globe’ a non-profit app dedicated towards encouraging individuals to do something for the environment. Through innovative ideas and deep research and months of brainstorming, Prachi has added a novel app for everyone in the world to access and do something to stop the ever-declining health of the planet.
Daring to Take the Leap
Coming from a family of engineers, following on that same path was an obvious option for Prachi. But she was not quite satisfied with the choice. It was a letter at this juncture that showed her the way. Once she was anxiously walking across her room back and forth, thinking over her career path, just when she got hold of an old school letter, written years ago as a task assigned by her teacher in her school Aksharnandan.
“I was utterly surprised by this letter as I had totally forgotten about it. Our teacher had one day asked us to write a letter to ourselves about who we wanted to be or what we wanted to do in 10 years’ time.” To summarize what little Prachi had written, it was to “make an impact”. Finding that school letter was the push that she needed to not enrol herself in Media school instead of engineering as that was more of her calling.
Prachi was honoured with the Olive Green Crusader of the Year Award by the International Advertising Association and is also the recipient of the Taru Lalvani Award for Environment Protection. Other than that, she has also been invited as a guest lecturer and expert speaker on climate action at the WWF Modal Conference 2021, the National Conference on Urban Sustainability, and multiple schools, universities, Rotary Clubs, and citizen groups.
Realizing the problems of the people
For Prachi, instead of just obsessing about the idea of doing something, she actually set out to give life to her thoughts. She started her quest to “make a change”, by volunteering in NGOs. She worked with several social entrepreneurs such as Dnyaneshwar Bodke , the founder of Abhinav Farmers Club and Nalini Shekar, the founder of Hasiru Dala, a non-profit organization helping marginalized waste pickers in Bengaluru. These experiences and working for such a great cause have helped mould her.
In the midst of all this, as a part of her Mass Communication course, she was preparing a short film about little kids and their dreams. That was when she came across this little 12-year-old boy in the slums of Pune. “When I asked him about what he'd wish for if given a chance to wish for anything in this entire universe. He simply said – ‘I'd wish for my house to not get flooded like last year.’
This was an eye-opening experience for me in realizing the problems of the people.” Prachi said. A little boy was asking for something as basic as a secure shelter. Hearing this little boy, Prachi decided that this was it. She had to do something about it as time was running out.
Cool The Globe
She shared her thoughts and worries with her parents who were extremely happy about their daughter being a responsible citizen and were ready to support her fully. They started from their home. “I and my family pledged to reduce our own greenhouse gas emission by 10%. I also began researching the topic more deeply. I wanted answers to various questions related to climate change and its causes,” Prachi adds.
After 2 months of brainstorming and research, people around Prachi started taking notice. From ordinary citizens to her friends and neighbours, everyone was recognizing the goal behind her idea and wanted to be a part of it. This amount of interest and enthusiasm from everyone around provoked the idea in Prachi to globalize this quest. And that was the beginning of ‘Cool the Globe’.
As Prachi explains, “Cool the Globe is a non-profit app that allows common people to reduce their GHG emissions to a target. The basic aim of Cool the Globe is to motivate and show every citizen how much their individual actions can add up and ensure a better future.” The main issue about trying to reduce emissions was that even those who were aware of its consequences didn't know where to start. Almost everyone nowadays has apps that can measure Calories in their food and how much they burn doing certain activities.
Prachi applied the same concept to found ‘Cool the Globe’. “On the homepage, people can see a Global meter that shows the collective reduction of emissions by over 2 lakh citizens from over 100 countries. Till date, we have collectively saved over 1 million kg of Carbon dioxide equivalent emission.”
Every user is given a monthly target and is also provided with a list of activities they can integrate into their day-to-day life to reduce their carbon footprint. If someone decides to ride a bicycle to the office 10 km away instead of taking a car, they can save up to 2kg of Carbon dioxide emission monthly. The app gives you a clear idea about such data which indeed gives the users an exact idea of what and what not to do.
Spreading Awareness
After launching the app, Prachi realized that the real task had just begun. “The real task was convincing ordinary people to start contributing towards the cause. I started doing simple campaigns to explain who we are, what we do and how an individual can contribute to the cause by doing simple activities and so on. The campaign was well received and picked up by people. Everybody started talking and sharing and tweeting about the app. Over 2 million people got involved fast. Cool The Globe was getting responses from entrepreneurs, policy-makers, political leaders and global ambassadors, media and most importantly ordinary people started coming forward,” Prachi explains.
Support from people all across the globe poured in. Prachi says, “Once a 9-year-old girl told me that she doesn't have a phone, but wanted to do something for the cause. Another person said that he has fixed his bicycle after joining the app and is using it instead of his car to go to his office and by doing so he was saving over 60kg of emissions in a few months. Such positive feedbacks were always a reassurance and inspired me to do more for the planet.”
Expanding Reach to Engage Industries
A big positive aspect of the growth of the app was several large companies from across the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors started reaching out. They wanted to help as well but didn't know what they could do. Prachi told them that a clear idea about their target and goal was crucial and mandatory for contributing to the cause.
‘Cool The Globe’ is about to launch another version for teams and organizations. Using this, various companies can realize the importance of mitigating climate change. They can see the collective emissions reduced by the employees and even reward them. The app also offers a sustainability report of the collective actions taken by the employees. If implemented in the manufacturing industry properly, Prachi’s new project has a huge scope for making an impact.
Prachi added, “It is of no doubt that the companies that start to integrate climate change in their system will be the leaders of the next millennia. Our country has a net-zero emission target by 2070, even though this is 20 years behind the global target of 2050, it still is something, having a clear target always gives room for hope. I believe that we, as a nation should work more to bring awareness about the matter to normal people. ”
Change Starts from Within
Prachi believes that “Climate change if not treated carefully can and will affect everyone on the planet. Hence, we need every single human being to stand together for this. Some of the biggest changes that happened in the history of mankind were brought forward by ordinary people uniting.” She further concludes, “Rather than thinking about a hundred reasons of why you'd fail, stick to the one reason that is asking you to push forward, trust that little voice and just start.”