Talk by Mr Sankara Raman, Amar Seva Sangam

27th August, 2012

We had the great fortune to be addressed by the secretary of the Amar Seva Sangam, Mr Sankara Raman. Founded in 1981, the Amar Seva Sangam has been instrumental in providing much needed rehabilitation and training to disabled people in order to help them lead normal lives. In circumstances where disabled people have been looked upon as a curse, neglected and marginalised, the Seva Sangam has been a beacon of hope that has helped overcome adversity and seen them emerge stronger.

Mr Sankara Raman himself is a chartered accountant who has secured gold medals in spite of a muscular dystrophy that has rendered most of his body paralysed. The talk was very touching and we all realised that we really had no reason to complain about the little difficulties that we faced in life as people has successfully overcome much greater challenges.  

Amar Seva Sangam website: https://www.amarseva.org/

A video outlining their activities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCajWROQp_M

Independence Day 2012

15th August, 2012

For this years edition of Independence day, we invited Mr Mahendra Munot, the owner of Maruti Medicals, who had earlier sponsored banners for our clean up drive. While shifting seamlessly between Hindi and Kannada, Mr Munot delivered a passionate speech that had the audience's attention riveted.

Apart from the customary recitation of the national song and the flag hoisting, we also undertook an awareness campaign against littering. Posters were displayed and slogans were raised as we walked along the neighbourhoods of Chandra Layout and Binny Layout, urging the residents not to litter.

Mission statement

After more than 3 sessions of brainstorming, we had zeroed in on the following aspects to be included into the mission statement:

1. Environment/ Sustainable Living
2. Cultural Empowerment
3. Inclusiveness of various people
4. Character Building and social responsibility

We felt that the following statement would successfully encompass all these intentions:

"To engage in selfless service, build character and live in harmony with the environment"

This is currently the mission statement of Samruddhi.

Environment Day 2012

23rd and 24th June, 2012

Since we had the World Environment Day (5th of June) following closely on the heels of the Shrusti lecture series, we decided to postpone our celebrations.

In this edition, we had a series of competitions aimed at children of all ages. The itinerary  and a brief description of each event has been given below:

1. Poster Making

Upto Standard 5
Theme: Anything to do with the Environment

2. Segregate This!

Upto Std 7
Time Limit: 1 Minute

This was an event that sought to test the participants awareness of secondary segregation of waste. The participants were given a small write up on the description of each waste type: E Waste, Hazardous Waste, Wet Waste and Dry Waste. They were given a big pile of waste and asked to segregate its contents accurately. 

Winners:
1st place: Chinmay
2nd place: Harivatsa P

3. Art in Chalk and Charcoal  
Std 9 onward
Theme: Global warming 

Participants were given sheets of both black and white chart-paper on which they were to draw with chalk and charcoal. Spent charcoal was sourced from the local dhobi, who has used its heat to iron clothes.

Winners weren't declared due to inadequate participation.

4. Best out of Waste 
Up to Standard 8

This was a contest where a big pile of waste normally produced at households, such as plastic bottles, pieces of string etc. were provided along with some glue and participants were asked to craft something artistic out of this pile. The competition produced interesting looking robots and submarines!

Winners:
1st place: Aravinth Mahesh and Arjun Jagdish
2nd place: Harivatsa P and Aravind Sylvester

5. Quiz Prelims and finals
Up to Standard 12

This was a general quiz where a few rounds were dedicated for environment related questions.

Winners:
1st place: Anuradha Prakash and Nitya Satish
2nd place: Kailash Hariharan and Ashwin Jagdish


6. Documentary Screening
Documentary: The Inconvenient Truth

During the screening, an important lesson was learnt, and that was to always include subtitles with the movie. The documentary, with its staggering revelations, left many people astonished in light of the need for immediate action to stop global warming in its tracks. 

Shrusti '12

During the summer vacations of 2012, we decided to have a lecture series called Shrusti. These lectures were spread across a variety of age groups and were based on improving their social skills. A list of names were quickly drawn up and lectures were planned, each targeting different age groups. Given below is the series of lectures that were conducted along with the age groups that they were targeted at. Details of a summer camp that was held as a part of Shrusti '12 have also been supplied.

7th May to 12th May

Weeklong summer camp for kids
Age Group: 3-8 years

The summer camp was planned as an activity packed learning experience for little children during their summer vacations. 3 volunteers from high school had planned a schedule for 3 hours each day, packed with activities such as shloka recitation, art and craft, literary games etc. The camp concluded with an exhibition of the various activities that the children had engaged in, much to the delight of their parents.



12th May (Saturday) 

Life in the Indian Army
Age Group: (Std 5 onwards)

Brigadier Murali spoke of how the duties of the Indian Army extend far beyond what we witness during war time. It is imperative for the army of a country to be in a mode of continuous preparation and planning during peacetime so as to keep itself sharp. The key message is to never let one's guard down and ever be on the alert. This would require a strong sense of patriotism, discipline and dedication to the duty one performs towards the nation. These values are imbibed by the soldiers of the Indian Army and form the backbone of their stellar performance on the battlefield. 

Careers in ecology
Age Group: (Std 6- Std 10)

As environmental destruction and the unmitigated and unplanned use of natural resources become the basis for the development of a fast developing nation, the repercussions of these actions become visible and threaten to curtail that very development. In such a scenario, the country would definitely require experts in the field of ecology. To highlight the various opportunities available to young students in the field of ecology, Ananya Rao, a PhD student at the Centre for Atmospheric and Oceanic Studies, IISc, made a presentation.


The essence of our scriptures
Age Group: (Std 9th onwards)

Mr Venkateshwaran has made a deep study of our scriptures, through the decades. This talk was held for us to benefit from his knowledge of our ancient knowledge of religion and morality. He spoke of how many prominent personalities of our times exercised the message contained within our scriptures in the course of their ascent. Through handouts and stories, he illustrated this message during his presentation. 

13th May (Sunday) 

The importance of hobbies
Age Group: (Std 5 - Std 10)

Anupam's presentation dealt with explaining how hobbies enriched one's life. By using the pictures of the slideshow to get his point across, he related incidents from his own life and explained how his hobbies have benefited him. The forum was then open for the audience to relate their own experiences and two interesting perspectives were narrated on how two off-track hobbies were nurtured. 


Effective Communication
Age Group: (Std 5+)

The Effective Communication presentation was delivered by Mrs Shobha Sundaresan. Her session was wholly interactive and engaged the audience very well. In the course of her interaction with the audience, she pointed out those traits of a public speaker that enhance the effectiveness of her communication while mentioning the various pitfalls that can serve as barriers. With role plays and demonstrations, the presentation concluded with a lot of learning. 
  

Binny Layout Clean-Up

18th March, 2012

Adjoining Goodwill Apartments is a layout called Binny Layout. The very lane adjacent to the apartment complex has a gutter for the flow of rainwater. This gutter is frequently used as a dumping ground and has an assortment of garbage ranging from household waste, thrown there in tied up plastic bags, to leaves and dried up vegetative matter. Armed with gloves and dust masks, we set about cleaning this gutter. The leaves were raked up using trowels and sacks. It took us a  couple of evenings to finish the task. Once the clean-up was done, we put up posters that implored people not to litter that place. The posters were lettered in both English and Kannada. The printing of these posters was very kindly sponsored by Mr Mahendra Munot, the owner of Maruthi Medicals.

The clean-up

Do not litter

The album that contains a few pictures of this clean-up can be accessed here.

On performing this clean-up, we saw that the gutter that we cleaned with backbreaking labour was dirty again in a few weeks. We then realised that there was no alternative for residents to drop off their daily garbage because BBMP had done away with public dustbins to encourage door-to-door collection of waste. The pourakarmikas who are carrying out this collection themselves use gutters such as the one we cleaned up for dumping waste and a truck would come and pick it up periodically. The flaws in this system were highlighted and a note was sent to the commissioner of BBMP, which went ignored. We realised that the clean-up of our streets requires our meeting with the local corporater and his cooperation would be essential for its success.

Republic Day, Talent's Day and Food Court, 2012

A modest function that saw us salute the national flag and recite the national anthem was our way of greeting the Republic Day for the year 2012. We then opened up the forum for anybody interested to say a few words on the occasion. After a few quick but enlightening speeches, we were done with the morning's show.

Standing up for the National Anthem

There was a Talent's Day show planned for the evening of the Republic Day. Here, we allowed the youth of the apartment to exhibit any talent that they have nurtured. We were greeted with a huge list of talents and a wide variety of shows ranging from the rendition of Bhajans, Carnatic violin recitals, dances, a capella, stand-up comedy and even beat-boxing. It was a fun filled evening which made us take pride in the fact that we were giving the children of Goodwill Apartments a platform to showcase their rich talent rather than sleeping away our Republic Days.

A Carnatic violin rendition

The following Sunday, the 29th of January, 2012, a Food-Court was organised. This time, we ensured that specific people were allocated sufficient quantities of certain types of filling dishes to make sure that we didn't run out of food and no one went back hungry. However, at this Food Court, we saw that the event was given a colour of salesmanship and this commercialisation was something that led us to decide to not continue this event thereafter.

Our Dry Waste Management System

In early 2011, we decided to put in a place a dry waste management system in Goodwill Apartments. Our approach has been one of cautious optimism, taking one step at a time to ensure that we build a sound waste collection system.

Waste segregation is of utmost importance in rapidly growing cities like Bangalore. To briefly state why it was so vital, we printed an awareness pamphlet that we handed out to all residents of our apartment. I'm quoting a paragraph from that pamphlet here.

"Waste management is one of the major problems every city across the world faces today, and our own Bangalore is no exception. The waste that is generated at homes is taken away by the BBMP and dumped or burnt in landfills beyond the city limits. This waste turns toxic and causes irreparable damage to the environment by polluting the soil, the groundwater and the surrounding air. Mavallipura, a village which is a few kilometres away from the Bangalore International Airport, is one such landfill, and the people of this village suffer from a variety of diseases on account of the unlivable conditions caused by these pollutants. Intelligent waste management is the need of the hour in all big cities in India to safeguard our health and safety as well as our environment’s sustainability.

With a rapidly increasing population in the Bangalore metropolitan area, this is a mounting problem. The government, which hitherto has been responsible for waste management, is at its wits’ end, and needs the help of citizens to solve this problem. Hence, it is our duty to reduce the waste we generate by adopting eco-friendly practices." 

Here is how we went about putting the waste segregation system in place. (Please try this at home!)

Initiation


To start with, we decided that all Samruddhi volunteers would start segregating dry waste in their own houses to know first hand how easy or difficult it was to do this.  We were to keep our eyes open for the little problems that may arise along the way. We would keep dry waste separately from the waste we generate daily and assemble weekly during Shramdaan (our weekly community service initiative) to pack it up in big sacks. We found that it was very easy to manage dry waste in our houses provided we had a little discipline and a little space around the apartment for its storage. We tied up with an NGO, Samarthanam Trust, for collection of this dry waste periodically. Samarthanam has tie ups with various waste recyclers in the city. At this juncture, we decided that it was best not to bother about secondary segregation of dry waste. We decided to manage mixed dry waste to start with.

We then implemented the system in one of our buildings, Yamuna. We went door to door and educated and convinced every resident of Yamuna to keep their dry waste apart. We told them how easy it was and picked it up from their households on Sundays. We allayed all their doubts and distributed posters stating what dry waste was. We even printed an elaborate pamphlet as to why we've initiated the process and what comprised dry waste. A month and a half into this process, almost all residents of Yamuna were segregating their dry waste. We then roped in the building helper, Doddiah, to help us with the collection.

Dispersion


We then went to the other buildings in Goodwill Apartments viz. Krishna, Pampa, Godavari and Kaveri. We repeated the whole process again, asking residents to segregate waste and collecting it ourselves for a month and a half. By and by, the amount of dry waste each household was giving us slowly increased to what we consider is an acceptable quantity for an urban middle class dwelling of four - 1 kg per week. Once every household was initiated into the process, we got Doddiah to go to the other apartments as well for collection on a weekly basis. One of our buildings, Yamuna, has spared a small part of its basement for storing the sackfuls of dry waste that we now generate.

Accountabilty


We monitor this collection process once in every two months to ensure that the machinery is running and is well oiled. We address any problems/ doubts that the residents may have during these visits. We also make sure that new residents are made aware of the process. We've a simple collection monitoring chart that is used to collect data on these visits.

Results


We've achieved a success rate of about 70%, which is considerable considering we are changing the lifestyles that people have adopted for decades. We consistently collect about 150 Kg of dry waste every month. We have now collaborated with Green Tech. for the dry waste pick up.

USP


We believe that our dry waste segregation model is successful and stable because Goodwill Apartments is a well knit community that is very cooperative. The cooperation that we've seen from the residents has been our strength for the most part. Also, Samruddhi is an organisation that is driven by youth power. We've found that we have a greater degree of acceptance when children tell their parents how important it is to be conscious of Bangalore's rapidly growing waste management problem.

In a nutshell

1. Volunteers start segregating in their households
2. We initiate the segregation process in one building
3. We educate residents on the process and ensure that the system is established (Posters, Pamphlets, Presentations)
4. We employ a helper to carry out the collection
5. We monitor the collection process periodically to ensure that everything is ship shape

We've found that dry waste segregation and management is something that can be done very easily provided there is some mental will to execute it. It involves doing some very simple things but makes an impact that is very large on a city like Bangalore, whose civic infrastructure is fast collapsing due to the mismanagement of solid waste.

Independence Day and Green Ganesha Chaturthi, 2011

In addition to the customary flag hoisting and rendition of patriotic songs on Independence day, we decided to something different this year. We decided to give the celebrations an environmental touch.

Patriotic Song Rendition

Two weekends prior to the Independence day, we organised a poster design competition for children of all ages. The theme of the competition, for those old enough to grasp it, was "Freedom From Plastics." Children of all ages were assembled in a hall, given chart paper and around 2 hours of time to design their posters. The result was a potpourri of creative display that children often surprise us with.

Ganesha Chaturthi happened to fall on the 1st of September in 2011. To prevent people from purchasing the harmful painted Ganesha idols, we had a collaboration with "The Living" for sourcing eco-friendly Parisara Ganapati idols. These idols were delivered to the houses of people who had placed orders for them.

A Parisara Ganapati idol

The traditional Independence Day celebration at Goodwill Apartments is carried out with the rendition of patriotic songs and performance of Indian dances. We also have one of our elderly residents come up and speak to us about their memories of the day of Indian independence. This year, along with these events, we decided to have a "Freedom from plastic" awareness march. Along with the posters of the poster design competition, we made a few more consisting of simple slogans that encourage people to cut down the use of plastic and recycle their dry waste. We then used these posters as banners for a small march around Chandra Layout.

Glimpes of the Freedom from Plastic march

These posters now adorn the walls of the various buildings in Goodwill Apartments.

Picture Credits: Harish Venkatesh.

Environment Day, 2011

Samruddhi commemorated the Environment Day of 2011 with a few enriching activities spread over the weekend on which it fell. Saturday saw the conduct of an Environment quiz conducted by Ravishankar and Ramapriya. This was then followed by presentations made by various children in the apartment on Environmental awareness. On the morning of Sunday, which happened to be World Environment Day,  vegetable gardening was scheduled, which took place with much enthusiasm in a mulch pit that is adjacent to the apartment. That evening saw the culmination of the celebrations with the screening of the splendidly shot documentary on the ecological balance of earth, Home.

Poster Credits: Nikki Ashok.