Friends, This is about the meeting of Environment groups held on last Sunday, 17th of May. Harinath, Dr. Sundar, Vamsee and I attended this meeting on behalf of TMAD. Actually Harinath doubled up as the Secretary of Sri Venkateswara Enclave.
Requesting all our TMAD members in Hyderabad to block 31st May to participate in the Meet the Community Programme. I selected the Siddhardha Nagar place for the following reasons not just because I stay there. Sri Satyanarayana of Kalyan Nagar Association resides near by and he is always supportive of us. Sri I V Rao of Shirdi Baba Temple also is a man of great help. Earlier we have a brief association with him with respect to traffic related initiatives. Also the Chief Officer of Krishnakanth Park is very cooperative. So we can take the support and co-operation of all of them in doing a campaign here. Requesting the cooperation of our members in this regard. Please read the points 1 and 2 mentioned below. This was actually a mail sent to BosF. Sharing the same here. ============================ The meeting turned out to be very good. The following groups attended the meeting: 1. Centre for Resource Education 2. SAVE 3. HARD 4. M.V. Rangaiah Foundation 5. Vriddhi 6. Its Time to Make A Difference (ITMD) 7. Indian Youth Climate Network (IYCN) 8. OISCA 9. Nenunnaanu 10. Kalyan Nagar Colony Association 11. Salivahana Nagar Colony Association 12. WWF 13. ITC 14. AP Environment Connect 15. Sai Prasad Sastry 16. Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan School 17. Viswa Manavata Samstha 18. To Make A Difference (TMAD) 19. TREE Foundation 20. HYTICOS 21. Sri Venkateswara Enclave (Colony) It was a good gathering; meeting started @ 8:15 am. All participant groups introduced their activities. During the introduction also there was a good discussion. The entire session has been very interactive. The following are the key discussion points: 1. Sensitisation Programme in the Colonies --- The actual idea is to identify 8 to 10 colonies wherein a door-to-door campaigning can be made and encourage the colony members to practise the environment friendly methods at home, on road and at office etc., --- A suggestion was that all NGOs should concentrate on these identified colonies and work together to make them as model colonies to project to the public/media/govt. that things can happen provided we have the will and resources. ---- Prasanthi on behalf of TMAD showed interest to work in Siddhardha Nagar, Yousufguda (from Krishnakanth Park to Kalyan Nagar). She will be executing it with the support and guidance of Sri Satyanarayana garu of Kalyan Nagar Welfare Association. ---- Harinath as the Secretary of Sri Venkateswara Enclave colony expressed his consent to take up this activity in his colony. 2. WoW programme of ITC Wealth Out of Waste Programme is a very effective one for environment protection measures specially in the efforts of reducing/recycling dry waste. ITC gives cloth bags to collect the dry waste and for every 10 days the ITC volunteer will visit the household/corporate/hospital etc., to collect it. For every kg of dry waste, they will pay Rs. 2.50 and for News Papers, Cartons, Magazines and Notebooks, they give Rs. 4.00. They are interested to give franchise to individuals or groups if they can take this activity to 5000 households. This is not only an environment protection measure but also an income generation option. ----Prasanthi, Sriram, Krishna Mohan and few others are interested in this activity. ---Vandana of ITMD group showed interest to execute this in Ashok Nagar where she resides with the help of HARD, SAVE and Manavata group volunteers who also stay in the same area. 3. Miyapur Lake Clean up Activity Tree Foundation is heading this project with the support from APEC. This is a long term project and is in the initial phases of study. The date for clean up activity is not yet announced. All stakeholders will be involved in this project. If you are interested in it or if your friends/colleagues stay in and around Miyapur, you can contact Arun Krishnamurthy (99599-77382 - arunoogle AT gmail DOT com) to join hands or for any questions. Ms. Priya of CRE who is very experienced in these type of activities asked some questions related to the source of water for the lake, the stakeholders and the length of catchment area etc., She is interested to associate with this activity and offer guidance and asked Arun to forward the technical details related to the project. ITMD group volunteers showed interest in this activity, got their questions clarified and gave some suggestions. 4. Environment Day (June 5) Activities Sri Saravanan of WWF(93466-04773, [email protected]) is heading these activities and also the Sensitisation Programme in Colonies. He will be sharing the complete details with us. There will be day long activities on 5th of June, interested members can attend and take part. 5. Who's Who of Environmentalists Chaitanya of IYCN (98490-16371, dementedstud AT gmail DOTcom) stated the effort to bring out a dairy with the details of all Environmentalists in AP. 6. Long term plan for Environment Programmes to fight climate change Chaitanya also quoted the importance of chalking a long term plan to make Hyderabad an Eco-city and also to fight the climate change in an effective manner. 7. The need for doing things collectively wherever possible and to colloborate wherever required - AP Environment Connect. Prasanthi of TMAD requested that it would be good if the groups working on the same cause can share knowledge and work together. AP Environment Connect invited all groups' representatives to subscribe for APEC as APEC can be regarded as a single source for sharing info./knowledge and events related to environment. 8. Anil of OISCA shared some of the problems he envisage with this type of networks and also how successful he was in uniting NGOs in different states. He pledged his support for any activity related to Environment. 9. Sri Satyanarayana also is of the same opinion and is not very happy with the response of citizens when it comes to development activities. He has very good experience and so he was very practical in looking at things. 10. Vridhdhi volunteers shared about the water campaign that they did recently and took part actively in the meeting. They also showed interest in the community sensitisation programme and WOW. 11. Harinath, Secretary of Sri Venkateswara Enclave, shared his experiences in keeping the colony united and also his success stories of filing RTIs for getting the long pending things done. 12. Dr. Sundar Raj of TMAD explained the benefits of planting medicinal trees on both sides of the road. There was a very good discussion on planting trees and the type of trees that can be planted. 13. Sri Sastry, an IRS, considers himself as a concerned citizen and he feels very bad for the amount of waste specially plastic that is found unattended after the political meetings. Despite many complaints no action has been taken. He is an inventor also. He shared about his success of running cars with his invention. He is now looking for the organizations to test the Bio-Diesel. 14. Ms. Pragna Prahlad shared the success story of her school (I forgot to take down the name) and how they have been encouraging children to participate in environment related activities. 15. Sriram on behalf of SAVE mentioned that SAVE is involved in restoring the dry bores and so they request us to inform them of any dry bores in and around Hyderabad. 16. Amarnath of Nenunnaanu group wanted to know the actions that should be taken against demolishing trees in the name of road widening and all. Ms. Ramalakshmi responded saying that this is also a serious concern and this involves lot of amount to translocate each tree to another place. If he is interested, she can arrange for a meeting with particular organization which is involved in this effort. 17. Sri Raghuveer ended the meeting that it was a good sign to meet likeminded groups and to know about the activities and interests and we can continue to meet at regular intervals and take things forward. 5th June: Cycle rally from different parts of twin cities to NTR garden on 5th June. 20th and 21st June: Climate change seminar at Deloitte on 20th and 21st June. (http://www.hysocc.co.cc/). For information related to APEC, you can visit the following group: http://groups.google.co.in/group/apenvconnect Thank you. with regards, Prasanthi.
