Chennai Coastal Cleaup/3, Feb 5, post-event update

2369 volunteers turned up yesterday to clean-sweeped the 2nd largest beach in the world removing 17.6 tonnes of garbage in order to send a strong message of environmental awareness through our society.

A shared concern of natural preservation brought together 60 teams including 1000 CTCians and individual volunteers, 17 companies, 12 villages, 9 colleges, 5 non-profits, 3 schools and 3 homes teaming up together for this massive cleanup operation.

The volunteers collected 1865 large bags of garbage across 13 target beach zones spreading over 15km from Marina till Injambakkam.

An organizing team of nearly 100 passionate CTCians including 40 group coordinators, 27 photographers, 8 media coordinators and 20 logistics/support volunteers showed amazing persistence in working countless hours and late nights in the past weeks in between their full-time day jobs to make this massive social operation a success.

Today we restored the original natural beauty of our beaches. Today we showed the world that there are thousands of like-minded souls out there which strongly care about our environment and preservation. Volunteers from all age groups from kuttie papaas to senior citizens worked side by side behind this common cause.

Inviting everyone to amplify our message of environmental awareness through our society by sharing, copying, tagging, like-ing the many special moments captured by the various photographers through the social media with friends and colleagues. Below we collected an initial set of 90 unique stills taken along the entire coastline by our team of 27 photographers -

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3056608696870.146115.1312929832&type=1

Requesting all participants to share their best photos and personal experiences through our forum and their social network. Let us share what happened today with thousands of our friends online and trigger a change in the mindset hoping for an eventual sustainable co-existence with our mother nature.

We thank our Mayor Saidai Duraiwamy for inaugurating our event and joining the cleanup at Besant Nagar. Following the foot-steps of the mayor, city councilorSri Vishwanathan participated at Pallavakam South beach and provided tea/coffee/snacks to the volunteers.

In Pallavakam North zone, the first person to show up for the 3rd major coastal cleanup was an 80-year senior citizen with a walking stick who came and picked up the the first garbage bag. 300 employees from Cognizant transformed the shores of the Adyar river disfigured by garbage flowing out of our city collecting 350 large bags in this area.

At Pallavakam beach 65 children of the Sunshine Academy worked dedicated along with the adult volunteers to transform the sea-side in a picturesque location.

200 employees from Nokia came and 100 from Dover came all the way from beyond Poonamalee and beautified our troubled beaches between Marina and Foreshore estate. In Neelankarai a family with 2 young kids from Canada participated as if this beach on the other end of the world was their own. One gentleman from the corporation joined our volunteers and singly-handed collected 15 large bags!

The kids from Karapakkam government school amazed our volunteers with their demonstrated discipline in forming 3 rows collecting the garbage in an ordered and efficient manner. They cleaned up their assigned zones very quickly. 150 employees from Logica restored Tirunvanmyur beach back to its original beauty, while a 200 head strong team from Mphasis removed the filth cover from Pallavakam beach.

In Besant Nagar the less-previliged kids of the Nalmanam home impressed us showing their independence and team work in collecting and removing large amounts of garbage. 2 other homes New Life Vision and Child Home participated in operation clean sweep.

In many zones the people and kids from the local community and fishermen's villages joined hands with our volunteers in the battle against large piles of garbage covering our beautiful beaches. People who had never met each other before worked as one team alongside each other towards the same goal.