They Fixed Six Rivers Quietly For 20 Years, Now They Are Bringing Youth Into The Next Chapter
Two decades. RM16 million. 54,000 Malaysians reached. The SPARK Foundation’s newest chapter is its most deliberate handover yet — and it comes with RM120,000 for anyone aged 18 to 35 with an idea worth backing.
- SPARK Foundation launched a RM120,000 Youth Water Grant, inviting Malaysians aged 18 to 35 to lead river conservation projects nationwide.
- After 20 years rehabilitating six rivers and engaging 54,000 Malaysians, SPARK is now passing the baton to the next generation.
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Renuka Indrarajah, Trustee of the SPARK Foundation, opened her welcome remarks not with statistics but with an admission.
“I had a water cut in my house this morning,” she told the room at Common Man Coffee Roasters in Kuala Lumpur.
You know the inconvenience you go through.
It was a disarmingly simple entry point for a woman who has spent 12 years stewarding one of Malaysia’s longest-running river rehabilitation programmes — and the perfect opening note for the occasion: the launch of the SPARK Youth Water Grant, a RM120,000 national initiative to put river conservation directly into the hands of Malaysians aged 18 to 35.
But the inconvenience she described is about to become far more common.
The Department of Environment (DOE) monitors 672 rivers nationwide; of these, 33 are classified as strictly polluted, while a further 171 fall into the moderately polluted category — meaning roughly one in four Malaysian rivers carries some degree of contamination.
Department of Statistics Malaysia’s (DOSM) Special Report on Impact of Floods in Malaysia 2025 puts total flood-related losses at RM636.9 million — spanning public infrastructure, housing, agriculture, and businesses across the country.
And with El Niño conditions intensifying, water cuts are projected to multiply across the Klang Valley in the first half of next year.
“Most Malaysians say — Malaysia has plenty of rainfall, we don’t need to do anything,” Renuka said.
It is time to really wake up.
Twenty Years Before the Grant
The SPARK Foundation did not arrive at this moment quickly.
The W.A.T.E.R. Project began in 2007 along the banks of Sungai Klang — a river so polluted that only flood eels could survive in it — and convincing local communities to care took over a year of sustained persuasion alone.
“We had to take them up to the mountains,” Renuka recalled, “to show them that the clean, pristine water at the source was the same water that, by the time it reached them, looked the colour of teh tarik. And they were contributing to that.”
The shift, when it came, was behavioural before it was environmental — residents stopped dumping rubbish into the river, community members turned used cooking oil into candles for income, and in time, fish returned, then kingfishers.
The work expanded to Penchala in 2012, Sungai Selangor in 2018, and Raja Musa in 2019 — a critical Klang Valley water source where a 300-metre clay dam, built by the foundation, ended a cycle of one to two forest fires annually; there have been zero incidents since.
Purple herons have returned; three hectares have been reforested.
Post-COVID, the programme pivoted to food security — most notably with an Orang Asli community in Pahang where women had no income source on arrival, and were generating approximately RM26,000 in annual revenue from their community garden by year two.
Across six rivers, the W.A.T.E.R. Project has engaged 26 government agencies, reached 31 communities, constructed 23 rainwater harvesting systems, and touched the lives of more than 54,000 Malaysians.
The cumulative investment over two decades: more than RM16 million.
The Handover
On 23 September — World Rivers Day — the SPARK Foundation and the Global Environment Centre (GEC) made it official.
“We have done this for 20 years,” Renuka said plainly.
We need new people.
The grant is structured across two tiers:
| Tier | Eligible Applicants | Grant Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Tertiary students & youth groups | RM3,000 – RM5,000 |
| Tier 2 | Youth-led startups & organisations | RM5,000 – RM15,000 |
Each application must include at least one Malaysian national. Individuals may only submit one application — the foundation was explicit that the intent is to spread opportunity as widely as possible across the country.
Proposals must address at least one of four pillars: water quality, water quantity, water accessibility, or river biodiversity.
On that last pillar, Dr Kalithasan Kailasam, Deputy Director of the GEC, offered a striking observation — that rivers in certain jurisdictions are now being granted legal personhood, recognised as living entities with rights of their own.
The fish and the turtles have more rights to the river than human beings. They were there long before us.
Successful applicants receive not just funding but structured mentoring, technical support from GEC’s panel of water resource experts, and guidance on turning proposals into scalable, repeatable projects.
The foundation was candid that ideas strong enough to demonstrate impact may attract larger investments beyond the grant cycle.
The application portal is live at waterproject.net.my/spark-youth.
Applications close 30 November, with project implementation expected to conclude by October 2027 — timed to coincide with the W.A.T.E.R. Project’s 20th anniversary year.
A Detail Worth Noting
On every table at the launch sat a box of fresh vegetables.
They were not a catering flourish.
They had been grown by W.A.T.E.R. Project communities — from the Sungai Klang community garden, the Sulawesi Forest Farmers Market, and the DBI community garden at Sungai Penchala.
“When you eat the vegetables,” the emcee said, “just remember where they came from.”
Asked what she hopes to see in the next 20 years, Renuka did not hesitate.
Water conservation becomes part and parcel of everybody’s lifestyle. Something you do at home. Something you do in your daily habits. And the youth — particularly — use the social media tools you have access to today to do incredible storytelling
To influence a far greater segment of the community to change their behaviour and attitude towards water.”
All photos by the writer.
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