Spreading Awareness in School

The past couple of weeks our focus has been on presenting to various schools around the city about the Paryavaran Mitra project. We start by showing the students a short movie (featuring members of our team and students from the Manav Gulzar center) that brings awareness to the rag-picking women in a way that is relatable to children. Then we explain more about the cause, what we’re doing, and how they can be involved. The main initiative we’re promoting is waste-collection drives. The format can vary based on what the school wants but so far, we’ve dropped off bins for the students to fill with either recycling they have at home or that they pick up off the street. The first drive serves as an awareness push and from there, we plan to pick up the recyclable waste every two weeks or so, as needed. The goal is that students will get a conversation going at home about recycling and hopefully begin incorporating it into their daily lives.

Not only do the waste-collection drives get the students thinking about recycling and get waste off the streets, but the monetary value of the collected waste will be divided amongst our sisters at future profit-sharing events!

The presentations have become something that we really look forward to. The opportunity to be heard by auditoriums full of students is a privilege and it’s quite inspiring to see how attentive the students are and how eager they are to get behind our cause. They are full of questions both about how they can help and about how they can understand the cause and processes more fully. It’s inspiring to see their interest at such a young age and we’re excited to spread the cause to as many schools as possible!