Volunteers don rubber gloves to clean the Yamuna
on Lucy Gets Curried Away! (India), 17/Dec/2009 17:58, 34 days ago
December 5th saw VSO India join in the Celebrations for International Volunteer Day. Swetcha, a partner of VSO organised a Yamuna Clean Up Day. The Yamuna is considered a holy river, and runs through Delhi, however by the time it hits the city it is considered dead, as no life can be sustained due to the heavy pollution and rubbish pumped into it everyday. The VSO staff and volunteers joined approximately 3,000 young people in the clean up, armed with blue rubber gloves, rakes and buckets we worked for 4 hours to shift as much rubbish out of the river as we could. The atmosphere was fantastic, everyone was getting stuck in and feeling enthusiastic about doing something for Delhi, not even deterred by people throwing yet more rubbish off the bridge. I was pulling bags full of flower garlands, clothing, paper, grain and rags out of the banks. Every time I thought I’d finally reached some organic matter, I’d find a new level of silted up rubbish to pull out!! The smell of methane was pretty incredible!I've made a short video about the day, check out....www.youtube.com/lucygetscurriedawayWe even managed to make it into the newspapers the next day!