Feb 1 clean up – success :-)
So its finally over. Here’s a summary of the event.
I reached the museum front gate close to 4 pm and Srijith joined me next, with hand covers. As we waited for the others, I took out the tidycity tags that were to be pinned on by every volunteer. Tarun, Dipu and Dilip came from different directions. Nithin, Bindu, Vishnu, Manu and Ashely were next.
By then I took the placards out and this caught the attention of the guard. He called us and asked us to get permission from an officer before carrying on with any program. So we went and talked to the officer. He was friendly and quite accepted our initiative. I was actually afraid if he might just throw us out right away. Fortunately we remained ‘unthrown’ and got his written permission.
By the time I came back there were more people. Vids came with more dustpans. Manu, Meenu had also come. There were about 13 of us then. More joined us later. We were ready to start. We divided into 3 groups. Each group was given a trash bag, a placard, dust pans, gloves.
I had a talk with Anil Sir who turned up to cover the event. By the time I turned back, I was surprised to see that the groups had already started picking up trash. There was no hesitation, no worries. It was more than enough to inspire you to join.
We moved in different directions collecting all sorts of trash including paper, plastic and glass. There were newspapers, plastic covers, ice-cream covers and sticks, tickets, broken glass and what not. We even found a receipt of a cash deposit of good amount. The trash bags that we carried soon started filling up and we found a garbage bin to dump it each time.
Our primary objective was to reach out to people and spread a message. Few people did come to ask us what we were doing. Few took interest but no one seemed too eager to join us. It was up to us to show this was not a one day thing to be forgotten about later.
It was interesting to notice that a few children actually came to help us. They enthusiastically picked up trash and came running to us to dump it. A few of the older folks came to us to throw the cola cans or food packets they were done with – well at least that was a start. It would have gone straight to the ground otherwise.
Many actually looked at us curiously but chose not to come and enquire about it. But we were not discouraged. Everyone who turned up said that they enjoyed the day and would definitely join the next time too. That will be next Sunday. The venue is not decided. There has to be a meeting to discuss the actions to be taken. The blog will be updated with all the plans. To take part in the discussions please join the mailing list by subscribing here (right side bar).
Pictures were taken. It will be posted soon.
If you ask me, I will say that when you are out there and doing these things, you get this feeling of actually doing what you want to see happen around you. That’s one feeling that is worth all the effort.
Thanks to each and everyone who came to join the cause and gave us all the support 
Special thanks to Tarun for running around taking pictures and trash-picking at the same time!
List of names who turned up (if I left out any name, please do let me know)
1. Dilip
2. Praveen
3. Vishnu
4. Manu
5. Meenu
6. Sible
7. Biju
8. Raja
9. Manu R
10. Ashley
11. Vids
12. Srijith
13. Nithin
14. Tarun
15. Bindu
16. Dipu
17. Cris
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Congrats to all of you for doing this wonderful initiative…maybe a sunday gone..but you guys have done something really great here!! I hope the message might have got across to a few people atleast..glad to know that the kids came forward too..
Wally,
This “Sreejith” you refer to – is that “Srijith”? Or is this a different person?
Its the same Srijith from Trivandrum community Nish
I misspelled his name. Corrected it now 
@Mathew and Bindhu, thanks a lot! Hope it spreads the message
Hooi! We did it guys! Thanks to every one who turned up!
And those who missed this time, there is always a next sunday! 
Nish, its SrIjith!!
Congrats, TidyCity team!
Sad that I couldn’t make it!
Dont worry Hari there is always a next time and in this case always a next Sunday
Hi Criski, nice job! Hats off 2 ur team!
Am dreaming of coming home and seeing the tidy museum!
@Vishnu oh-oh!
srijithv.com » Blog Archive » Tidy Museum posted on February 2, 2009:
[...] As they says – Start was Perfect , Now we need to keep the momentum. A perfect start was made by TidyCity team by cleaning up the entire Museum compound. Though we werent able to make 100% cleanup, the area we covered(almost 3/4th ) of the entire compound were litter less! You can read a detailed report by Cris here. [...]
Congratulations friends! Our city is direly in need of such initiatives. One can be optimistic about the future, and the welfare of our city, when there are youngsters like you to act. Thank you all for doing this.
I would recommend Veli and Shangumugham beach as prospective places for clean-up. The large influx of tourists have resulted in a lot of garbage around the beach. Trash stuck in the sand is difficult to clean-up with a broom and therefore the corporation also does not do it frequently. As you do the clean-up you could also perhaps talk to some of the vendors there and request them to put a trash bin next to their shop. If the shop keepers themselves encourage their customers to throw the trash in the bins, it might help to solve the littering problem to some extent.