We wish to tackle this problem with a pilot project with a two-pronged approach. We want to address the issue of awareness and sensitizing the population towards a clean and a safe environment by choosing the street that leads to the school (one of the dirtiest of the lot) and build momentum using a community march comprising of school staff and students, leaders and residents from the community going door to door with the campaign for creating a mindset that drives cleanliness. Second, and an equally important measure would be to create structures that channelize households garbage to a municipality collection area, which we seek to achieve through an employed garbage collection worker with a dustbin cart visiting houses in the street twice a week. As a part of the campaign in the street, we would like to get pledges of the residents to pay a paltry Rs.10 a week per household that would go towards the salary of the collection worker. Keeping children from the school at the center of planning and execution of this project not only puts them accountable for maintaining sustainability of the intervention, but also starts to create the first community change makers.

The project is aimed at building a collective conscience among the residents of the community to keep their surroundings clean and to create a sense of ownership toward the cause. We want to rid the roads of the garbage dumps and open drainages, and with that its unhealthy environment. Further, we want to cultivate leaders in the form of our students who are willing to solve problems in their lives and those affecting the community by positioning them in the driver’s seat of the project execution. As evidence to the recognition of the problem by the community, we would like to see the road that we choose for intervention garbage free and households paying Rs.10 each for the collection and disposal on a continuing basis. As a measure of wider success, we would like the residents to adopt steps that spread the action from one road to the rest, and work on mechanisms that render the streets clean.