Spreading health awareness in Zari slum near our campus BPGC was the first social campaign that we had started, and undoubtedly we had a lot to learn from the experience, both from what we did right and what could have done right to make it better.

As we try to analyze everything we did, we’ll try to keep it in order of how things proceeded, so that it is laid out in a sequential manner.

The initiation of the process was during a casual conversation between Harshita and Varsha about the quite well known pathetic condition of the pass from Zari that we take everytime we go out of campus. The convo was about why is not anything done, and while veering towards the obvious irresponsibility of the concerned officials and before fizzling out like most conversations about irresponsibility and all the impediments in getting anything done with our bureaucracy, they decided why not at least give a shot to trying, whatever be the outcome.

The very moment, they googled Zari, panchayats, Sancoale, Sulabh and a lot many things. The call process to find out who was responsible for the garbage collection began.

A list of some points, which we thought could have made our work better and easier.

1. After googling and before calling, we should have interacted with the locals of Zari to get a better view of the situation, since they live there and we only experience the inconvenience once in a while. They would have given us their take on the inconvenience that they face and even though we thought that we could imagine what they would be, there was lot more to it.Luckily, we were able to trace the one responsible for garbage collection in that area, by calls alone, (Kudos to IT seriouslyyy !!).

2. Instead of directly calling up Mr. Silvera for work, we should have taken time to carry out an informal survey to figure out how often the garbage is collected. What was more important was to make sure that the contractor sent his men regularly to collect garbage. In our case things went the other way round.

When we called Mr. Silvera, and Varsha negotiated with him about what he should/could do, he did finally agree on collecting the garbage from there but there were certain valid points that he put forth

a. The mound collected there is due to construction garbage, which as we later found out was because of the abolishment of illegal construction in Zari, and which made the whole surface uneven.

b. The amount paid to him was enough only to collect garbage from there twice a week.

3. Here it would have helped had we known exactly how and what were the funds allotted to him, and what were the details of his contract, but it was quite impossible as we understood it, to get such information.Next when he, agreed to sent the tractor the next day, we observed the whole process, and interacted with the Zari people. They were quite happy that someone had asked them about this problem or that something could be done about it. We got the contact of Sancoale panchayat’s president from there, and Varsha called him up, to fix an appointment. He did agree to meet us, which was quite fortunate. Our play the next day was to be staged in the Zari school.

4. Though the campaign was planned with thorough inputs, we missed out on proper script of the video ( not the play) owing to the insufficient time and other important commitments we already had. This would have made the presentation a lot better.

5. We did not have enough material related to cleanliness on our laptops that the kids could gain from, which was a bit due to time constraint, and some carelessness. We should have also had a bit more stuff about our campus and how close it is to Zari so that they could relate as well as feel inspired from it. We had some stuff, but not enough.

6. Regarding, the play we could have been a bit more innovative with the props and the story as well, but considering that it wasn’t our forte, and we were no actors, we did quite well.

7. Should have involved a few more friends in the campaign so that they themselves could have learnt it too, it would have been more publicized, plus we’d have had more manpower. Apart from that for the informal interaction with the kids, a group of small number of kids should have been taken care by one person each, after all one to one interaction makes a hell lot of a difference.

8. The post-production could have been better and less tiresome, provided we had some studio equipment like microphones and soundproof rooms as it involved voice-over in certain areas of the video (with a parallel audio track in the other layer). Though an ideal studio setup is not possible with the limited hardware and infrastructure we had, we could have simulated it at the least. But, it’s ‘time’ that is the culprit again.

9. We should have kept in touch with the president and tracked whether he really did do, what he assured us he would. We had almost no time left for it due to exams, but at least telephonic pressing could have been done.

10. We forgot to discuss Silvera’s (the contractor) issues with the president when we met him. Though later we added the details in the letter we gave the president, but I guess saying things in person is different. Hence we were able to create an initial impact, but whether it had a lasting impression or not, was something we did not have enough time to map, and we could have probably done something in this direction.

Any further suggestions are welcome…