Our Story

THE FOUNDER

Sarin Singhal

Sarin Singhal is a senior at The Lawrenceville School whose work brings together freshwater science, environmental education, and anthropology. His interests center on understanding both how water systems function and how the people who depend on them experience those systems differently.

He has spent three summers with The Watershed Institute’s StreamWatch program, sampling sites across the Millstone Watershed for E. coli and harmful algal blooms and conducting laboratory work in bacterial enumeration, nutrient analysis, and turbidity testing. In 2026, he was selected as a Leopold Scholar in Ecology and Ethics at the Stroud Water Research Center, where he worked with Dr. David Arscott and led two research teams comparing urban and protected streams.

Sarin also wrote and illustrated The Water Around You, a children’s book on watersheds, stream ecology, and water justice, and produces Watermarks, a documentary series featuring anthropologists who study water insecurity around the world. He founded The Ripple Effect to bring those scientific and human perspectives together in water education for younger students.

HOW IT STARTED

From a stream sample to a water-education program

The Ripple Effect began while I was volunteering with The Watershed Institute’s StreamWatch program, sampling streams across central New Jersey for E. coli and harmful algal blooms.

At one site I had monitored throughout the summer, I returned to find the water brown and cloudy, with oil on the surface and runoff entering from nearby construction. It made me think beyond the sample itself: water keeps moving downstream, through communities, carrying the effects of what happens upstream.

That experience pushed me to think more seriously about how children learn about water, not just as part of the environment, but as something that connects people, infrastructure, and inequality. The Ripple Effect grew from that idea into a program built around hands-on water education.

OUR MISSION

Helping children understand water inequality

The Ripple Effect teaches children how clean water reaches communities and why reliable access to it is not shared equally.

Water availability is only part of the story. Infrastructure, public investment, geography, and decisions about where resources go all influence whether a community can depend on safe water. Through hands-on learning and real-world examples, The Ripple Effect introduces these systems in a way younger students can understand.

The goal is not simply for children to know that water inequality exists. It is for them to understand how it happens, recognize that it affects communities both nearby and around the world, and begin asking better questions about something they encounter every day.

OUR APPROACH

Start with the local water

Lessons begin with the streams, reservoirs, and utilities students already live near, so the problem is something they can go look at rather than something they read about.

OUR APPROACH

Nothing costs anything

Kits, presentations, and teaching resources are free to every classroom, library, and family that requests them, because a program about unequal access shouldn't have a price attached.

OUR APPROACH

Questions over lectures

Sessions are built to be interrupted. The lesson plan is a starting point, and what kids actually ask usually turns out to be the better route through the material.

How We Work

We combine science-based strategy with local community engagement to create sustainable, measurable environmental impact.

WHAT WE DO

Presentations and free hands-on kits

The Ripple Effect provides interactive presentations and take-home water education kits for children ages 6 to 11. Programs begin with the science of water, including watersheds, water quality, filtration, and the movement of water through natural and built systems. From there, students examine why access to clean water can look very different from one community to another.

Each kit is assembled by hand and includes six components: a filtration experiment, an illustrated activity book, a reusable water bottle, a take-home challenge, a pledge card, and stickers. The materials are designed to extend the lesson beyond a single presentation and give children something they can continue exploring at home.

Kits are provided free of charge. To date, The Ripple Effect has distributed 266 free water education kits and hosted 7 school and community events across central New Jersey, including programs serving children in Trenton. Student volunteers also help develop and assemble resources for classrooms, libraries, families, and community organizations.

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