Observance of “Clean Delhi Day” on 12th September, 2010

The citizens awareness campaign titled ‘Meri Dilli Meri Yamuna’ on March 16th 2010 was also launched by Art of Living at Purana Qila. The organisation spearheaded a week-long cleanliness drive of the 8 Yamuna ghats where thousands of volunteers cleaned the ghats, waded into the water and removed debris and waste and also planted trees on the ghats to beautify them.

The CBSE in collaboration with the Ministry of Urban Development and GTZ has introduced the ‘National Initiative on School Sanitation’ where the aim is to inculcate good sanitation practices in the school children. The CBSE has also issued directives to schools to set up Health Wellness Clubs and Eco Clubs through which it is expected that schools will mobilize students and community in awareness generation leading to behavioral change in the areas of Sanitation and Safe Hygiene Practices, Waste Management and Disposal, Water conservation and Waste Water Recycling and its Utilization, Conservation of Green Spaces, Innovation and Sustainability and Water and Sanitation and efforts towards water management.

‘Meri Dilli Meri Yamuna’ work towards “3A’s” – Awareness, Action and Accountability – among multiple stakeholders including citizens, the government, NGOs, educational institutions, corporate houses, who will all be exhorted to play their part both in cleaning up and sustaining cleanliness of the Yamuna and will culminate in a Clean-up drive of Delhi in September before the Commonwealth Games on 12th September. September 12th is being observed as CLEAN DELHI DAY.

The Delhi Government has given a great boost by adopting Meri Dilli Meri Yamuna’s Clean Delhi Drive (CDD). The ‘Meri Dilli Meri Yamuna’ plans to undertake the cleanliness and awareness drive throughout Delhi from the 6th-11th September. The city has been divided into various zones and the ‘Meri Dilli Meri Yamuna’ has assigned coordinators for each of these zones who will be liaising with all civic agencies and provide all possible logistical support to schools in their zone who register with Clean Delhi Drive (CDD) through the registration form that will be available soon.

All the schools affiliated with the CBSE Board in the NCR are urged to undertake the worthy cause of engaging with Clean Delhi Drive (CDD) purely on a voluntary basis.

The volunteer schools are required to undertake the following as a participant:

• All children from the 3rd to the 8th standard to distribute information/ awareness pamphlets to at least 50 people. The pamphlets to be given to them to take home and the children may distribute to their neighbours, people who visit their home, shopkeepers in their local marketplaces, parents colleagues etc.

• The schools are requested to adopt a site nearby and have the children (13 year -17 years) nurture it till 5th September. The site may be a park, a block of houses, a marketplace etc. One section of the school can visit the adopted site with garbage bags etc and clean it. If required the MDMY will provide gloves and masks for the children and the MDMY zonal CDD coordinators would also provide logistical support where requested.

• 6th -11th September- On the decided date for each zone all the schools from the respective zone will go to their adopted site and urge all the citizens to come out and celebrate their efforts of the children and also urge the citizens to help maintain the sites and keep them clean.

Following this all schools are requested to nominate 10 students as Clean Delhi Captains who will pledge to nurture the sites till the end of this academic year. They are expected to help keep the site clean by monitoring the sites, visiting them once a week and urging the people to keep it clean and reporting to appropriate authority if the site is not clean.

Clean Delhi Day

• 12th September-‘Meri Dilli Meri Yamuna’ (MDMY) would invite all the participants of the Clean Delhi Drive (CDD) to converge on to India Gate and celebrate their efforts and of course a cleaner city. We would also like to honour the Clean Delhi Captains for their effort they pledge to undertake of maintaining the sites.