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School students choose to spend summer vacations the ‘swaccha’ way

On June 5, Swachhalay will organise a special awareness programme at Carter Road Amphitheatre, Khar (West) where Bollywood celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan and Farhan Akhtar are likely to be present.

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The core team of Swachhalay.
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While most kids prefer to go to different places tp spend their summer vacations, these school kids from Bandra have chosen to stay home and do their bit for the society.

Arsh Mogre, 16, who just appeared for his Class X exams from R N Podar school, is working on the sanitation programme called ‘Swachhalay’. Arsh, who is the co-founder of Swachhalay is not new to social work, being active in the field for the last two years. He urged his school friends also to support the UN sanitation campaign and got associated with social activist Shweta Bajpai Kadam, 32, co-founder of Swachhalay.

Arsh speaking with iamin, said, “Sanitation is a major problem in India, especially in the Mumbai slums; and the problem cannot be solved by only constructing more public toilets but maintaining the existing ones.”

“We have public toilets but in many areas they are not cleaned. We thought of creating awareness in this regard and many people including Bollywood celebrities and politicians are supporting our cause. Swachhalay will tell people how to use toilets and the benefits of sanitation programmes,” he added calling his work an awareness campaign.

Initially there were only a few members but now around 100 people are a part of Swachhalay. Tanvi Nathwani, 16, who handles Swachhalay’s social media, is actively tagging celebrities and eminent Twitter personalities to bring their attention towards the cause. Last week, members of Swachhalay surveyed Kurla ST depot’s toilets where authorities denied them permission to take pictures of the toilets lying in a sad condition.

Shweta Bajpai, who works on ground for the team, found out that the toilets at Kurla depot had leakages and the caretaker was not maintaining them properly. “They were asking us if we had permissions to click pictures. If a passenger is paying for toilets it means he/she wants good clean toilets,” syas Shweta.

Toilets in Kurla’s Thakkar Bappa Nagar are lying in a sorry state for many years now. Swachhalay members are now meeting local residents to start an awareness campaign among them. “Locals from the area approached us and gave a positive response to our sanitation programme,” said Sahil Sheikh, 21, a new member in the Swachhalay team.

The team also met MP Poonam Mahajan and briefed her about their awareness campaign. On June 5, Swachhalay will organise a special awareness programme at Carter Road Amphitheatre, Khar (West) where Bollywood celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan and Farhan Akhtar are likely to be present.

The Swachhalay team, a mix of young and old, is currently working in Mumbai’s north central area and plans to expand the area of their work soon. They are thinking of means like street plays also to further the cause.

To know more about Swacchalay, visit their facebook page here and Twitter here.

For the longer version of the report, click here

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