Scrappy beach clean up and play Mahashivratri morning

Over 100 children from DN Nagar Municipal School Andheri West, Posha Nakhwa Municipal School Versova, and Rishi Valmiki Eco School Goregaon West, along with volunteers from Oracle, Disha Foundation, and The Children’s Scrappy News Service, decided to spend the morning of the auspicious Mahashivratri festival doing their bit for the environment and cleaning up the south end of Juhu beach. Stand-up comic Nitesh Shetty mentored the kids by guiding them to pick up all kinds of plastic, big and small, because, he informed them, micro plastics are the most harmful to the environment. Spectron, the team contracted by the BMC to clean the beach, had already done their clean up early morning and the beach was clean, but when the kids and volunteers filled more than 20 oversized bags with garbage and plastic buried under the sand, the cleaners appreciated the clean-up drive and said more such initiatives should be taken up, regularly. Most of the waste collected was the waste that washes up on the beach, coming from the rivers, they informed.  

After the clean-up, the kids and volunteers together played beach cricket, volleyball, and football. Volunteers from the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) taught the children about the importance of marine life conservation and biodiversity, local lifeguards spoke about safety when at the beach and the kids from Rishi Valmiki Eco School put up a beach play on turtles.

At the end of the morning, everyone ate a locally-sourced sustainable breakfast. Kids and adults alike were mindful to put their trash in the garbage bins. “We will be more careful now to keep our city clean, especially during festivals such as Chhat Puja and Ganesh festival, when the beach gets really dirty,” said one student.

The Children’s Scrappy News Service is a news-talk-game show movement to enable children to get to the bottom of the biggest problems we face as a city, Climate Change, and take action to change the way things are.Scrappy ~ to make something out of nothing to change the way things are. We believe anyone can be scrappy. To be scrappy is to change the world with whatever you’ve got, wherever you are.