Sanitation Awareness Campaign — Gandhinagar City, Gujarat

Report of Sanitation Awareness Campaign — Gandhinagar City, Gujarat

By invitation of the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) in Gandhinagar, Suresh Parmar and I traveled to Gandhinagar City on 20 February 2014 to lead a walking Sanitation Awareness Campaign. With our Nandini Van, we traveled there with the goal of raising awareness around sanitation and health and hygiene practices to address such issues in the rural areas surrounding the city. Over 200 people attended this program.

In our traditional Gandhian spirit of Love, Truth, and Values we marched five kilometres alongside members from the DRDA, local government officials including the District Collector and District Development Officer, and a number of invited guests from the surrounding areas, including quite a few people who joined along the way including school teachers and students. With the Nandini Van in tow, we sang bhajans, chanted sanitation slogans, and handed out posters with positive messages related to sanitation. Our goal during this time was to build rapport, emphasise the need for proper sanitation in modern day India, and create the inspiration for people to action in their own lives and villages. Though our approach is serious, we also try and have fun and engage people on the heart-to-heart level, as this is where the change ultimately starts.

                                                                                 

The mind enjoys a peace during silence which it does not without it.  My experience tells me that silence soothes the nerves in a manner no drugs can.  With me, it also induces sleep.- Gandhiji.

After concluding the rally, we filed into a nearby social hall and gave a formal presentation about how to improve sanitation, health, and hygiene habits in our personal lives and in our communities. It’s one thing to talk about the need for improvement and another to take action. We want to ensure action is taken, so we attempt to provide the skills and inspiration to do so. In addition to our formal lecturing and sharing of experience, we also showed short, inspirational films that promoted various sanitation values, such as use of toilets,  washing hands, and using waste bins.  We appreciated the fact that the ministers of government who attended distributed green flags to a number of delegates from the various villages as a symbol that it is now their duty to take the inspiration received from the program and share it forward in their local space. That is always our hope and what our sustainability model is based on Inspiring others to be the change.

If we are need to reach real PEACE in this world, we shall to begin with the CHILDREN