A clean sweep

Around 20 school and college students residing in and around Cheddanagar took part in a cleanliness drive on Saturday, May 30. Armed with brooms they swept the roads of this locality in the literal sense.

Young students from Cheddanagar took part in a cleanliness drive

Explaining the purpose of this unique drive S Ravindranath, from Vedant Welfare Foundation stated, “We organised this drive to instill values like the importance of cleanliness among the younger generation. Usually cleanliness is limited to one’s home but we extended this concept to the locality level. Clean surroundings encourage healthy living.”

College students like Chandrashekar, Vivek Pandey and Viro Chand from Swami Vivekanda college took part in this drive. Chandrashekar informed, “Our college has a programme known as Additional Credit Programme in which we are required to work with any NGO for 30 hours. Later we are awarded certificates.

We decided to volunteer with Vedant Foundation. When we heard about this drive we readily joined in because we felt a strong need to keep the area clean. Our families also supported us in this drive.”

Nithya Hariharan, another college student who was a part of this cleanliness drive, expressed, “For girls it is not a big deal because we sweep our homes but now we have taken the concept to the streets.

By demonstrating cleanliness practically we have actually send out a strong message to the citizens — do not litter your neighbourhood.” School students from Cheddanagar’s Modern English school, Swami Vivekananda school and OLPS school also took part in the drive.

Bupesh Gouniyal, a Cheddanagar resident employed with Hindustan Lever gave a talk to the students on the importance of cleanliness.

He reiterated the message of ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’ to the young audience. “Even if we are poor, if we are clean we can stand with dignity.

In most of the western countries the roads are clean because the citizens do not litter. In our country spitting on the road and throwing garbage is not limited to the lower strata, even the middle-income, educated families do not think twice before dirtying their surroundings.

Spitting on the roads besides being an eyesore is also a major source of spreading diseases. During my interaction with the students, one of the school kids who took part in this drive pointed out that dirty surroundings give rise to dirty thoughts, which was indeed an eye opener to all of us,” he admitted.

Vedant Welfare Foundation plans to undertake many more meaningful drives in the future including a workshop on women’s empowerment particularly for the urban educated homemakers.