In order to solve, I thought of cleaning it using the Reap Benefit playbook of fixing such spots. I invited youngsters to be the part of the team & we will be together going to clean it along with taking full precautions.
I also went to health department of Corporation office for their support & invite them to be part of this garbage spot fix. I got their support as I was taking on ground actions already in Jalandhar. One of the Sanitary Inspectors, 2 Community Facilitators & 2 motivators along with 2 sweepers became the part of the team.
There will be a team of 6 young girls from PCM SD College for Women who are ready to be a part of this clean up drive.
Materials we bought & brought
- Gloves
- Masks
- 1 student (Simran) brought jhadu
- White Paint Box
- 1 big, 1 medium, 1 small brush
- 1 pot which Simran & Rajat took from somewhere
- 1 Phenyl bottle
- 2 small showels
- 1 big bamboo seek broom, we took from Sanitation worker
- 4 Sacks in which waste would be put
In the morning, we all reached in between 9-9:30 am. We took the pre-cleaning picture. We started picking the waste which we could pick from our hands & started putting it into sacks. Meanwhile Waste picker came with the Rehda in which he started putting the waste along with Sanitation workers. Sanitation workers helped us pick up the remaining waste which contained broken glasses. Post this, we cleaned the space with water which contained phenyl as there was a urine smell.
It was lovely to see that one of the citizens distributed almost 15+ Maza bottles to us, one of the food vendors gave us 3 water bottles, and the Auto Union people gave us a bottle of coke to drink. Even the Sanitary Inspector(SI) Aman sir along with Community Facilitators (CFs) Suman & Saroj Ma’am talked to vendors nearby not to throw waste & asked where they threw their waste. One of the NGO representatives named Kirti Kant ji also supported us in doing the work.
So after taking a drinks break, we started beautifying the cleaned space. We came up with the ideas. As a group, we decided to write a positive message. As there were a lot of advertisement posters stuck on the wall, we chose the area under which we would do the painting. We decided to put up the banner next time. 2 auto drivers came to support us in the first layer of painting. Then we started writing a quote in Punjabi. We also did a small drawing so that it would be easy to understand those who weren’t able to read Punjabi. Then we kept the pot at the cleaned place where the place was not levelled.
Some of the vendors thought that any Minister was coming as a result, cleaning was done. Two auto drivers whom I have talked earlier, they appreciated our efforts as they were saying that “Youngsters ne kaam karke dikhaya hai’’
Finally, it took us between 4-4.5 hrs to make this place look clean. We were happy as we could see people were now able to walk in that place. After this, we cleaned our hands, took the post cleaning picture & went to have a good lunch.