India River Week : Nov 21st- 27th 2022

Fast urbanization has been a major cause for degradation of rivers all across cities including Pune. Excessive chemical pollution, insufficient sewage treatment plants, encroachment and limited water in rivers due to dam are now common woes in all urban cities. The continued effect of all these, leading to climate change has already reached our homes. 

Understanding the severity of the issue, a lot of organizations have been working around these issues for past several years. India river week has been successfully celebrated by Jeevitnadi since 2015, under the banner of ‘Muthai festival’. This year however, a lot of other organizations joined hands, along with the support of PMC too and we worked around the prime focus of creating awareness among children. 

The theme was ‘Pune River Revival’, and on flowing on these lines, the chief guest for the culminating programme was also the ‘river’. 

To achieve this objective various activities are planned from 22nd of November to 27th of November.

  1. School Quiz (conducted between Nov 21st - Nov 24th): A fun, interactive and informative quiz to raise awareness about the rivers of Pune. Private English & Marathi medium schools & PMC schools participated in this quiz. More than 268 PMC primary school children and other English & Marathi medium school children from 4th to 7th grade were part of this. 
  2. Pledge (conducted between Nov 21st - Nov 24th): School children were asked to create their own “Pledge for the River” 
  3. Social media campaign between Nov 21st and Nov 28th: Young generation is techno and media savvy. These Youngsters were asked to  upload a DP with river revival posters on their social media networks. 
  4. School March on November 22nd: A walk was organized by different schools to raise awareness about the problems faced by rivers of Pune. School children walked with hand-made banners and placards near their school. The best creation was awarded
  5. Cleanup drive on November 26th: River bank cleaning on select stretches of river in association with Swachh Pune Swachh Bharat & PMC was done.
  6. India River Day concluding celebration on November 27th: On India River Day, we had a series of cultural events like dance performance with songs of the rivers, street plays on the plight of Pune’s rivers called 'Punyala Jevha Jaag Yete' & 'Nadi Sampavar Jate' etc. The performances were interspersed by speakers like Parineeta Dandekar, Dilip Kulkarni, who talked about the rivers, flooding in Pune and what needs to be done to ensure that the rivers are flowing, free and clean. Awardees from various schools also spoke about their vision of a river in the city. 


With the spirit of 'My river, my responsibility' the event was a huge success with over 250 people attending the grand finale programme at Sambhaji park and with a lot of them vowing to support the cause going forward. 

Video links of the celebrations:

- Shubha Kulkarni
cshubha100@yahoo.co.in




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