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Story of Active We
Once upon a time, in a small Village, there held an “Election Counting Event” in a Govt College. After the event, the Organizers cleaned the college premises but did not take care of Garbage created Outside the College Campus. This lead to Pile up of Garbage on entire roads and fields. They were filled with plastics and plastics – wrappers, water, and juice bottles, breakfast packets, carton boxes and so…..
One Friday morning, Adult informed children about the bad conditions of the roads, which were dumped with plastic waste due to the election counting event conducted in neighboring college. Here goes the conversation between Adults and Children.
Adult: What do we do?
Children: We all together shall clean it.
Adult: What if it happens next time?
Children: No, No, No. We can’t clean every time. So we will inform and then clean.
Adult: Whom do we inform and where do we inform?
Children: Village head / Event organisation people / Panchayat / College people
How do we inform?
Adult: How?
Children: We’ll go and tell or write a letter
Adult: How will they know if the waste picked was created from the event?
Children: We’ll take Pics Before while doing, and after doing.
Adult: Why only we need to complain?
Children: Anyone can Complain, and we can involve more neighboring people
Adult: Why should I complain?
Children: It’s my right to inform and also my duty to keep the environment clean.
Adult: How can we now go ahead?
Children: We’ll make groups, collect materials that are needed for Cleaning? One take Photos and others pick Plastic /
Adult: How much area do we clean?
Children: How much ever we can, Close to our campus, some area, 100 plastics, We as a group will decide how much area …..
There set an event of 30mins dedicated to Plastic picking.
Quickly made teams, children took initiative to collect all required materials and set the journey.
In the Process, some expressions were; yucky this is stinking, this looks bad, this is wine bottles, so much of Plastic, How can they do this, what if animal eat these plastics, what a bad state of fields – they made into dump yard, and so on ….. All their talks while picking were about garbage. As a team, they were completely involved in picking, clearing and almost 8 full sacks of garbage were collected.
There the story did not end. It continued with
Adult: What to do Now? What next?
Children: Clicked Photos. Now we need to write a letter and ask them to pick this garbage. Quickly one group actively involved in collecting info about whom to write the letter and in the process connected with people. While the other people were involved in writing a letter , discussing what all to write, what action we expect from the respected people.
Finally, we took a print of letters and all set the journey of asking the neighborhood to sign the letter. Children went to Model School and Polytechnic explained about the issue and our purpose. Some teachers accepted and signed, and few questioned back that we keep our campus clean and why should we sign. Children patiently explained to them and set to the next step – visiting the Panchayat office. They all felt bad when they saw the closed door.
This entire process churned the child’s beliefs about their roles and responsibility as a citizen.