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July 26, 2004

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  DRISHTI: SCHEME TO SELL WASTEPAPER TO GENERATE FUNDS TO ORGANISE CATARACT SURGERY
School students, Kollam Distrct

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Use trickles of contributions to build up a large resource of salable item, sell the same to an industry needing it and use the money so generated, to conduct cataract surgery camps. This innovative approach to sustainable development has been tried out at Kollam Distrct where school students collect previous day's newspapers ie, waste papers.  This collection is then consolidated at school, block and district level before being sold to Hindustan Newsprint Factory at Kottayam.

Drishti, as the scheme is called, has the blessing of the district administration of Kollam and aims at making the district cataract-free. While students are the key resource persons of the activity, the District Collector, Dr.Rajan N.Khobragade is the coordinator and facilitator. Already about 89770 kg of wastepaper has been sold in this manner and an amount of Rs.5,27,847 generated. The project has succeeded in its objective in 2 blocks and 317 persons have successfully undergone the surgery. It is hoped to complete the work in other parts of the district in the next 1 year.

After necessary management interventions like arranging committees and nodal officers at district and lower levels, the stakeholders were given awareness about the scope and purpose of the venture. Competitions and group activities were planned to drive home the message of the campaign.

With all these efforts, the people too started coming forward. The first panchayat to support the scheme, Veliyam provided a truck load of wastepaper. Similarly, St.Antony's church at Chittumala too gave a truck load of paper. Others like Banks, Library etc too contributed their might, thus generating the huge bulk of 90 tons of paper.

Apart from the money generated by the venture, the scheme inculcates in the students a feeling that waste products aren't really waste but can be creatively reused for the benefit of the society.

 

 

 

 

 

Courtesy: Malayala Manorama, June 22, 2004

Contributed by: Administrator

 

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