Woodstock and local community join hands for clean-up

An initiative started by Woodstock Grade 10 students (Class of 2012) grew bigger as members of the local community and other Woodstock staff and students joined hands to help clean the hillside by the Tehri Road. On Saturday, May 8th, more than 200 people volunteered to pick up rubbish, separate recyclable trash, and raise awareness about cleanliness.

Led by their class governors Priyankar Chand and Sukham Kaur, Grade 10 students began a community service initiative around a month ago to voluntarily take responsibility for the cleanliness and maintenance of the Tehri road from the school gate to the top of Mullingar Hill. The students placed two stainless steel dustbins on April 10th with the help of a few employees near the Tehri Bus stand and tea shops. The bins were paid for and placed by the Grade 10 class officers and students, with the agreement and support of the local politician, Mr. Rakesh Bhandari, who is the municipal head for the particular road extending from Woodstock to Mulingar.

On Saturday, around 50 Grade 10 students, 20 staff members, a dozen other students, and more than a hundred volunteers from the local community showed up to clean the hillside. Grade 10 joined hands with the CLEAN organisation to help in recycling trash and cleaning the area. Students from Woodstock's rock-climbing club, led by Mr. Suman Mitra, also arrived on scene to be belayed down the mountain to pick up trash.

Mr. Rakesh Bhandari and Mr OP Uniyal (Municipal Head of Mussoorie) were also present to offer their support for the initiative. 15 men were sent by the Municipality to help the students in their clean-up work. Grade 10 governors were promised that the collected trash will not be thrown down the khud by the municipal garbage collector, and that they will help set up large industrial size dustbins.

A total of 700kg of recyclable trash was collected on Saturday, but unfortunately, only about 10 percent (70 kg) of this trash could be recycled as the soil had degraded its recyclable condition.

According to class governors Priyankar and Sukham, the next step of the initiative will be to set up educational signs that talk about environmental sustainability along the road. Class members plan to visit the houses of the local inhabitants and talk to them about the importance of the environment.

The Class of 2012 is hoping to be associated with the care of this stretch of the Tehri road until their graduation, after which, they are hoping to pass on the responsibilities to a junior class. Their future plans are to eventually clean up the entire khud and remove all of the trash disposed of down the hill. The class is also looking to work on the treatment of stray dogs along this road.

Priyankar and Sukham were interviewed by Australian radio journalist Leslie Branigan on Wednesday, where they mentioned that local church Friends of Garhwal, are planning to initiate tree-plantation drives with them.

"Woodstock can usually get quite isolated from the rest of the Mussoorie community," said Priyankar, "We wanted to involve the local people and raise awareness amongst them to keep the environment clean, particularly now that global warming is set to become a big issue in the future."