My Clean India : Clean Chennai Initiative

Clean Chennai: Chennai Flood, a disaster which disturbed entire Chennai where many people suffered for essentials and forced to start their life in new way. I got chance to make my effort towards helping stranded ones via Social media as well as coordination with Ground Teams. Nepal Earthquake experience helped me a lot in helping people, struggling to find the exact status of their loved ones. Always a moment of pleasure when you receive encouraging words from citizens on Social Media & especially from those who gets benefited by your help:

http://anupamji.blogspot.in/2015/12/chennaifloods-no-joy-can-equal-joy-of.html

After initial rescue and relief efforts, my effort towards a cleanliness mission to rid the city of flood-ravaged grime, and thus the advent of “Clean Chennai” campaign. People from all walks of life and corners of the city joined forces to propel the mission towards the path of success. My team in coordination with 10 other teams made cleaning efforts at Porur, Perambur, Anna Nagar, Koyambedu, Kattupakkam, West Mambalam, banks of Adyar River, flood affected government schools at Thoraipakkam & Pizhichalur. With social media playing a pivotal role in gathering ideas and information, I tried my best to reach every possible form of social networking sites to spread the message and reach out to a larger mass. The initiative gained immense support and response.

We also arranged meetings and events to discuss future events and progress of works in different areas. Starting from young kids to veterans, teachers to actors, all came out in support of the mission and took to streets, wielded brooms, walked through slums and suburbs to clean every nook and corner of the city. The success of this voluntary-driven campaign is yet another achievement along the lines of ‘Swachhta Abhiyan’. Besides its key message on cleanliness, it has also brought out how united a city can be in times of distress and voluntarily work towards cleaning the flood-devastated areas. http://www.archive.niticentral.com/2015/12/31/clean-chennai-mission-339214.html

My message towards Clean Chennai is that; cleanliness starts from within, from all of us - 6000 tons of garbage leaves the city every single day to get dumped at the eco-sensitive Pallikarnai marsh where the toxic mix eventually reaches back to us through groundwater and polluted air while burning plastics (steady rise in cancer cases in city). Garbage cannot be thrown away - it will always get back to you. We throw it away and through drains and rivers it ends up in the sea, poisons our eco-system, garbage gets thrown back on the beach, toxic sea-food on our plates. The message is simple: we need to change our behavior, we need to take ownership of our garbage - simply segregate wet and dry garbage at home - dry garbage can be recycled and wet (kitchen waste) can be composed. That way 90% of our garbage footprint can be reduced.

Clean Chennai effort completes 101 days on March 17, 2016. www.epaper.amarujala.com/vc/20160113/07.html?format=html more