Greenesha 2016

Every year, Mumbai witnesses a frenzy of celebrations spread over 10 days of the Ganesha festival. Close to 3,00,000 idols are worshipped at household and community pandals and thereafter immersed at the city’s beaches and lakes. Along with the idols, holy waste called Nirmalya is also immersed. This includes flowers, natural and synthetic decoration material and other religious offerings. Consequently, the city’s beaches and water bodies, never entirely clean, are further polluted every year. Needless to say, this is a major health hazard and a civic nightmare for the municipal authorities.

United Way Mumbai’s campaign, aptly titled Greenesha or Green Ganesha, aims to transform the way in which we celebrate this festival and make it environmentally friendly. It is a unique, high impact community engagement initiative led by college students in the city of Mumbai during the Ganesh festival celebrations.
Through Greenesha, we aim to -

Build a citizen movement for an environmentally friendly celebration of the Ganesh festival
Create a path breaking opportunity for students across Mumbai to be catalysts for change
Visibly reduce waste disposal in the city’s water bodies during and after Ganesh immersion
Ensure the waste collected is appropriately treated and converted to organic manure

Interventions:

Over the past 7 years, we have designed a program which involves multiples stakeholders, creates large scale awareness and has a visible impact through on ground interventions.

In 2016, we propose to –

Recruit and train college youth as campaign ambassadors
Create awareness and garner support of Ganesh mandals for waste segregation and environmentally friendly celebrations through student volunteers
Facilitate Nirmalya collection and segregation drives on major immersion days
Conduct post immersion clean up drives at 3 city beaches – Girgaon Chowpaty, Dadar Chowpaty and Juhu Beach
Set up and run a waste treatment facility for converting the collected Nirmalya into organic manure

Schedule for this year's Ganesh festival is as given below. We will be undertaking Nirmalya collection on immersion days and post-immersion Clean-Up drives on these days.

Date	Day	Festival Day	Proposed Activities
05/09/2016	Monday	Ganesh Chaturthi - Arrival	-
10/09/2016	Saturday	Gauri-Ganesh Immersion	Nirmalya Collection drive to be done by college volunteers
11/09/2016	Sunday	Post-Immersion Clean-up drive after Gauri-Ganesh Immersion	Corporate Employees + College volunteers to clean-up major immersion sites
11/09/2016	Sunday	Ganesh Immersion	Nirmalya Collection drive to be done by college volunteers
12/09/2016	Monday	Post-Immersion Clean-Up Drive – after 7th day	Corporate Employees + College volunteers to clean-up major immersion sites
15/09/2016	Thursday	Final Ganesh immersion	Nirmalya Collection drive to be done by college volunteers
16/09/2016	Friday	Post-Immersion Clean-Up Drive – after 11th day	Corporate Employees + College volunteers to clean-up major immersion sites

Campaign Differentiator:

There are several organizations and clubs that undertake cleaning of beaches post the major immersion days. Greenesha’s key differentiators are –

Large scale student engagement thereby creating consciousness in the citizens and future decision makers of the city.
Outreach with Ganesh Mandals to ensure segregation of Nirmalya and other materials at source.
Promotion of Nirmalya segregation during immersion (United Way Mumbai is one of the few organizations undertaking this initiative).
Setting up and running of a waste treatment facility which ensures that a viable solution is offered to the Ganesh Mandals who follow the appeal for environmentally friendly celebrations.