Category: Events

Many thanks and congratulations to all those who participated in our Shahdra Valley Cleanup on Saturday, 17 Novmeber 2012. We found the picnic point in a rather bad shape but left it looking a little prettier. To our surprise, we didn’t find as many disposable plastic bottles as we had expected after our experience in Kaghan Valley earlier this year. So the recyclables were hardly a few kilos. However, the situation with candy wrappers, bags of chips, and styrofoam tea-cups was far worse. We collected hundreds of them from the bushes, the edges of cliffs, and from the flowing water which would have been crystal-clear but for these pollutants. Our estimate of this combustible waste was about 75 kilograms. We burned it all and buried it in a landfill which we dug ourselves. All the waste was gone from the valley as if it never existed. Magic!

We started at 8:45 AM and finished at 4:00 PM. With a little over an hour for lunch break, that amounted to about 6 hours each committed by 8 people for a total of 48 man-hours. However, to do justice to the beauty of this valley and to restore it to its glory, we probably needed to put in 150 man-hours. We could have achieved that easily with greater participation. Unfortunately, several people withdrew in the 11th hour and two of the volunteers were no-shows after they had signed up.

We need to discuss in forums how to improve participation and especially how to deal with no-shows. Not showing up after signing up is breaking a promise. We had planned for those 2 people and thus ended up wasting seats in a 4-wheel-drive vehicle which means we wasted some fuel in a poor country that imports all its fuel. If only we can all keep our promises, there is hope for this organisation and for this country.

Congratulations and thanks to all those who participated in our Community Service effort in central Kaghan Valley between 15 and 21 June 2012. In spite of many hurdles, the biggest of which was everyone’s availability, we gathered a team of 12 for a modest effort in partially cleaning up one of our loveliest but polluted areas. We collected about 100 kilograms of recyclables from Lake Saif-ul-Muluk, the Saif-ul-Muluk Nala, Lalazar, and Shogran. We carried the recyclabes all the way back to Naran where a recycler separated all the plastic, tin, and aluminium containers  and delivered them to the recycling plant in Balakot. In addition, we gathered, burned, and buried nearly 1,000kilograms of non-recyclable waste and refuse. For 12 people in just a few days – working, climbing, and carrying heavy loads at altitudes of 8,500 to 11,500 feet – it was a commendable effort.

Some of you may think that our work will not have a lasting impact. This is true only if you compare our number with the number of tourists who visited Kaghan Valley this season. The 12 of us only worked for a few days at cleaning up a mess that thousands will recreate for months on end. Indeed, ours was a drop of disinfectant in a sea of waste. But there may be other ways of looking at our effort.

Perhaps some of you are now convinced that by polluting this planet we are sowing the seeds of our own destruction. If so, then the impact of our effort will be lasting. You saw for a few days how we are destroying our rivers and annihilating our forests. Indeed, many of you were convinced – you even tried to convince others, strangers – that keeping this earth clean is good for all of us. That we should do it in self-interest, if not as a matter of principle. If you spread this word among your friends and family, colleagues and comrades, then the impact of our effort could be both lasting and widespread. There is hope.

However, for that to happen, it is crucial that all of you express what you have seen and felt. Please make an effort to express it through this website. We need volunteers to set up the website for receiving reviews from all participants and for putting it all together with the hundreds of photographs and videos we brought back. Such a presentation on the website could be a powerful tool for a lasting impact and another reason for hope.

Our effort was also an opportunity for all of us to share views, jokes, bread, slippers, tents, and a lot more for a few days. It was an opportunity to understand others and to expand our minds. The intelligence, eloquence, sincerity, courage, and committment with which all of you shared the work-load and resources is another reason for hope. Some of you have an extraordinary capacity to give. With young people of such nature, we don’t merely have a reason for hope, we have a reason to be optimistic and excited about our future. Thank you.