Gandhifellowship "Mini Public System Project :स्वच्छ भारत अभियान "

As this is our first unofficial post as a group in a form of a blog. Let me take few seconds to explain the core objective of this endeavour.  The primary objective is to connect with the people around and showcase them our constant efforts. In others terms, we also want to stimulate our youth to join our hands to become a change maker by bringing change within himself or herself. At last, We wish to explain some of our objectives, Learnings and challenges throughout our journey within the fellowship tenure. We will be explaining all of our practices and endeavour encountered during our processes.

Copyright to Patitapaban Chaudhory

Now, read the title again "Mini Public System Project: स्वच्छ भारत अभियान". So, As you can understand from the title, it is another process (Mini PSP) that we have participated in for a week. During this process, we got some direction and suggestion in a form of a document. I am mentioning only the gist of it. The key terms mentioned in that document were as follows

• one week - Duration.
• 3 Hours a day ( we could use 3 hours for this as we have other works going parallelly to this).
• Sustainability ( We have to make our idea/plan/सोंच sustainable ).
• Schools or communities ( We could choose any places from these two as our target area)
• Women participation ( As we all firmly believe that women participation is very important to the success of any endeavour).
• Involvement of community head-Sarpanch, community members parents, students, teachers and govt. officer.
• Mindset change ( This is the key to sustainability).
• To impact on at least 70% of people in the community.
• To conduct an event to ask for the participation of the community or others.
• To collect photos and videos side by side to showcase the endeavour.                                    

From All of this, we can come to a conclusion that it is not just an awareness campaign but more than that.

Ok, now we can talk about our plan and how we did it in our cluster. But first, let me introduce you to all of our member who did this together as a team.

Adarsh Suryawanshi 

He is from Ayodhya. He is a fatherly figure in our house. He has done his graduation from Allahabad University and masters in rural development from Banaras Hindu University(काशी हिन्दू विश्वविद्यालय).

   Annu Jha 

She is the princes' charm of the house. very caring and accommodating.She is originally from Bihar but her parenting was done from Dhanbad, Jharkhand.She has done her Bachelors in journalism from Makhanlal Chaturvedi national university of journalism and Masters in Communication in Media's studies from the Central University of South Bihar.She has a sweet voice.

Satyabrata Sahoo 

He is the godfather. The thinker and Mr. caption cool. He has an immense strength of remaining cool in an adverse situation. He is from Cuttack, Odisha. He has done his bachelors In commerce(Management Honours) from Ravenshaw University, Cuttack Odisha. He has also completed his MBA in Development Management from Centurion University, Paralakhemundi, Odisha. 

Patitapaban Choudhury 

He is the altruist. Energetic and smart enough to use NVC(Non- Violent Communication) at times. He is a gem in our team. He has done his BBA from KIIT University, Odisha. He is from Berhampur, Odisha. He has also the honour of representing India in Rugby.

Mohit Kr Singh

Hi, Now, I have to write about myself. I am the only child of our team. Everyone cares for me so much so that I never felt, I am not at my home. I am the only Engineer here on my team. I have done B.tech From Asansol Engineering College in Applied Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering.

Now, I am going to share our day wise schedule and planning and what we wanted to achieve in the end. We as a Gandhi fellow got a responsibility to clean a community and make it through sustainable modelling. So, We wanted to develop such a plan or idea that we can use in other communities with slight change according to need. We wanted that our plan will be acceptable to every community and remain sustainable even after we disengage from that. We want ownership of the community people on our shared plan and they should feel the need of doing this.

Day-1

We planned a meeting with the Sarpanch of the village Kasimpura and the School HM of GUPS Kayasthpura. We wanted to involve them in our plan and needed equal participation and motivation for this work. We explained to them what we are planning for next seven days and what would be his role in the coming days. We wanted Students participation in organising the event and to lead the cleanliness drive in their community with us. So, We asked for help from HM. 

With sarpanch Ji, we talked on various topics starting from our introduction and purpose of choosing this village to the availability of funds for the cleanliness. We got an assurance that we will get all his support for this work.

Day-2

On the Second day of our journey, we visited the community and had a conversation with the parents of the students and other villagers and asked them some common questions about the Cleanliness. We asked them "How they dispose of degradable and Non-degradable waste".

We also went to school and prepared Nukkad Natak with the help of students. We made a script with the message indicating the importance of Cleanliness in the society and asked few questions that "why Villages are getting more and more polluted with the Non-degradable waste?" The village was very clean 10 years back but now we can see the piles of plastics here and there. Students visited the community with a rally and the slogan on "Swachhata". We identified few important places where we played Nukkad Natak.

Then we met with the Sarpanch Ji with the idea of Volunteer generation. We wanted few young volunteers who can help us impact widely in the villages. We want them to be motivated enough to carry out this process for a larger goal which is the sustainability of our shared plan in the village. We explained our idea to Sarpanch ji and with three hours with the help of Sarpanch ji we managed to generate 19 volunteers. We made a list of those volunteers and asked them if they are free 5 in the evening for the next day. We wanted to have a meeting with them before a community meeting so that we could reach on the same level with our plan. We noted everyone's name and mobile number and dismissed them for that day.

Volunteers at site

 

Day-3

We wanted to have a community meeting with the help of sarpanch ji and our volunteer. So, we started to frame our messages to talk to the community members and prepared some poem, Videos and speech.

After that, we met with our volunteer at 5 in the evening and motivated them with our objective of cleaning our village. We talked with them about the ranking of our district and the state in the SWACHH SARVEKSHAN 2016 report and also discussed with them a story that was published in that same report from our own district Jhunjhunu. We also showed them a video at the end of our discussion“Bharat ka Khat Apke Liye”  Link of the video ----

https://youtu.be/mxwFPm1T0vQ

We wanted to have a survey in the village so that we could identify the more critical problem of the community people. We prepared a survey form with the help of Volunteer and shared that with them. The volunteers took the ownership and agreed to go with the form to each door in the village and do the survey. We decided that we will complete this task by 5 PM on the next day.

We also pasted some note on the wall regarding the community meeting near sarpanch House. We asked the volunteers to invite the community people to the community meeting tomorrow at 5 PM during the survey.

Day-4

As was planned, We started our Swachhta rally from the school with the help of the kids and went to our two targeted community. Student’s played Nukkad Natak on the Chaupal and main area of the villages. We return back to our school by 2 PM. After that, We went to the community where the community meeting is going to be held. We established our gadgets and collected the survey form. Then we started to put our point in front of the gathering. There were 39 children, 21 male, 09 women and 11 senior citizens were present from the community. Sarpanch ji, was also available with us. We expressed our concern about the cleanliness of our village Kayasthpura and Kasimpura. We asked people that what is the reason that our villages were clean 10 years before and now it is filled with plastic litters. We have also shown them a video of the Asia’s Cleanest Village Mawylynong placed in Meghalaya, India. We understand collectively that if we try to give 2 hours of our week on a regular basis. It will not take much time to clean our village and after that, we could keep our village clean throughout easily by devoting 30 min of our time weekly. We with the present villagers took a pledge on the cleanliness.

Day-5

We started three days cleanliness drive in this two community for 2 hours with the help of our Volunteer and other community people.

For having large-scale impact, we went to the office of the BDO Alsisar and talked with them for about 3 hours. We wanted that BDO could arrange a meeting of us with all his 34 Sarpanch. Luckily, we got an opportunity to talk to all the present sarpanch and Gram Sevak as there was already a workshop arranged on that same date on MSGY( Mukhyamantri Swachh Gram Yojna).

We came to a conclusion after a discussion that we will get to work with one Panchayat to develop it as a model plan for others.

The selection of panchayat would have certain criteria

   1.Enrollment in School should be decent.

             2. Women participation should be needed.

             3. Sarpanch motivation and desire to experiment with us.

             4. The population should be average.

After that, we selected Budha ka Bas Village.Sarpanch ji seems motivated enough to raise their hands first and remain checked on the above criteria.

Day-6

We were continuing our cleanliness drives in Kayasthpura and Kasimpura with the help of our volunteer and Community people.

We went to Budha Ka Bas and attended a meeting with all the HM of the 5 GUPS(Government Upper Primary School) school and 1 GSSS(Government Senior Secondary School) school. We started to narrate our objective and brief of our plan to do this in the Five community of Budha Ka Bas. We did the same thing like volunteer generation and planned Nukkad Natak.

Day-7

In Kyasthpura and Kasimpura, we ended our engagement and hand over the responsibility of keeping their village clean in the hand of volunteers and sarpanch ji. Sarpanch ji, also assured us that they will set up dustbin in the village with the fund that they will get from the government and will try to keep the village clean.

                                                         धन्यवाद !