Attukal Pongala Campaign Strategy Attukal Pongala 2019 Attukal Pongala is a 10-day festival celebrated at the Attukal Temple, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India, during which there is a huge gathering of millions of women on the ninth day. This is the lighting of the Pongala hearth (called Pandarayaduppu) placed inside the temple by the chief priest. The festival is marked as the largest annual gathering of 2.5 million women by the Guinness World Records in 2009. This is the earliest Pongala festival in Kerala. This temple is also known by the name Sabarimala of women. Mostly Attukal Pongala falls in the month of March or April. Trivandrum Municipal Corporation successfully implemented green protocol for the third time with the help of the Health Department and Green Army International. The need of Green Pongala About 4 years back the amount of waste collected at the end of Attukal Pongala used to measure around 350 tons. Corporation took steps to spread messages of Green Protocol to the devotees and food distributers more effectively with the help of the Green Army. In 2016 Corporation brought this measure down to about 170 tons. Corporation continued to give out Green Protocol messages and warnings throughout the year. And the measure came down to 85 tons in 2017 and 75 tons in 2018. After the years of reduction in waste, Presently, this year, in 2019 the waste has reduced as much as 65 Tons. The numbers show the reason and need for Green Protocol implementation for festivals. It could be understood that festivals or huge gatherings of people anywhere can bring about a huge amount of wastes in which the mixing of food wastes and other materials makes handling of wastes difficult or literally impossible. Green Protocol is a much easier method to reduce wastes. But not limited to just Festivals the result shows the importance of following Green Protocol on a daily basis as well. 1. Campaign Campaigning is mainly focused on Devotees participating for Pongala and Organisations that distribute food for devotees. Devotees Devotees are one of the major and important categories of people in Attukal Pongala waste management. Shops Posters that give out messages about Green Pongala was used as a campaigning technique. The area selected for the campaign included places that had maximum crowds such as Connemara Market and Trivandrum Central Railway Station. Volunteers also pasted our campaign posters at Chalai market and Eastfort. The posters spread message such as, Bring their own Plates and Cups for Pongala, Use of Non-Woven Poly Propylene Bags is prohibited in Trivandrum District. Hence the use of prohibited carry bags is punishable, Page 1 of 14 Avoid using items such as Flex, Thermocol, or Plastic decorations. Instead, use only Environment-Friendly materials. After Pongala, collect the used bricks from the road and keep it at a convenient place on Footpath. The posters that were used for campaigning can be found in the link below. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Ujb1hiaxc8epKh8j_oz-CwEWyJk4EMop?usp=sharing Social media Campaigning through Social Media is a new idea implemented this year. First Method: Making Trolls relating to Green Pongala. Trolls were an effective way to catch the attention of people and make them understand the biggest things in a very simple way. Criteria for Trolls were to share it in social media with a green army tagline. The troll with maximum likes and shares was awarded. Second Method: The idea was to take Selfie Video of devotees who were intending to take part in Pongala. The criteria for the video were to talk about how they are going to implement Green Pongala that year and the video should be less than a minute. The idea was successfully implemented through Facebook. As a part of this many celebrities participated in the campaign. Videos with most likes and shares were awarded. Winning Troll School Another campaign strategy was to campaign among the school students and through them to spread the message into individual homes more effectively. Awareness about green protocol implementation and the importance of a Green Pongala were explained in assembly by our Green army mentors. 20 Schools were visited by the mentors. Mentors gave awareness about green pongala to 400 students. Green Army Mentors. awareness programme on Green Protocol. http://tiny.cc/kgdx4y Page 2 of 14 Organisation Request letter form Mayor about green pongala was also distributed by our volunteers in different wards. On 11th Feb. door to door campaign was done in Manacaud Ward. This year we included ward councilors for campaigning as well. On 15th Feb. volunteers along with ward, councilors did campaigning in wards such as Vanchiyoor, Fort, Thampanoor, Sreekandeswaram, and Kalady. A total of 22 wards was giving awareness about Green Pongala this year. 2. Training and Capacity Building Training of Volunteers Attukal Pongala green protocol implementation was started with an orientation held in Trivandrum Municipal Corporation on 9th Feb. 76 new volunteers participated in this orientation. On 13th Feb., a Mega Orientation about green protocol implementation, crisis management, behaviour of volunteers led by Nikhilesh and Vasanth was done. The highlight of this event was that Mayor himself interacted with the volunteers and talked to them about the importance of a Green Pongala. Around 250 volunteers participated in the sessions. The sessions were taken parallelly by Nikhilesh and Vasanth inside the Corporation premises. On 17th Feb. a volunteer meeting was held at Corporation office to divide the volunteers into eight zones and gave guidelines on how to do the survey and assessments for Pongala. On 19th Feb. one day before Pongala, volunteers were sent from their respective Hubs for Survey and Data collection from food offering trust, Society, Pourasamithi, etc. 458 volunteers participated for the survey. 387 volunteers on the Pongala Day, 20th Feb. assessed each of the food distributing parties. Documentation Each team consisted of four to seven members. In which one was assigned to fill the forms, another to take photos and videos of the survey, another one to interact with distributors, and another one to find the route and identify the stalls. It was made a point to take photographs of the violators along their route. It was found that the easiest method to group and sort the photos was to make each team name the photos with the location and send them as an email to the respective Hub In charge with Team Code as Subject. Volunteer registration and attendance were taken on the respective days, 19th and 20th by the hub in charges Recognition Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation announced awards for those distributors who show best practices in implementing Green Pongala during Attukal Pongala. Team for Thanal entered all the survey and evaluation data to a soft copy, sorted it, analysed it, and shortlisted the best distributors. 15 Distributors were shortlisted based on their adherence to Green Protocol by Green Army volunteers. First four organisations came under the Gold category who were awarded and given a cash prize of 3000 rupees, next four organisations came under the Silver category who were awarded and given a cash prize of 2000 rupees and the last seven organisations came under the Bronze category were awarded and given a cash prize 1000 rupees each. Winner’s list can be found in this link : https://drive.google.com/file/d/13ipr_rGJafipFMbPti8n-xoiD-dyyMLq/view?usp=sharing Route Planning of routes was the next thing. Active areas were divided into 8 Zones/Hubs which included Killipalam, Eastfort, Vanchiyoor, Vazuthacaud, Kamalaeswaram, Palayam, Secretariat, and Pettah. Page 3 of 14 The Zone in charges were Nikhilesh, Sooraj, Sujith, Sanitta, Ajay, Lal, Sajin, and Akhila. Zone/Hub wise map was created and individual routes for each team were identified and plotted. The zones were planned purely based on the accessibility of the volunteers. Also, routes were identified on the basis of roads rather than dividing it on ward basis. Zones 1. Secretariat Route 1 Statue – Cantoment road – Nabard – HRC Office – Vanrose Jn – Housing board ss Kovil road – Manjalikulam road – Gnadhari amman Kovil – Govt press – Statue BSNL Office Route 2 Statue – Spencer jn – AKG center – St Joseph’s school – left towards rajadhani – Right road to Uppalam – Ayurveda College – Pulimood Statue Route3 Sreekumar theatre – Bus stand – Model School – Panavila – Bakery Jn – Statue Route 4 Thampanoor – Thycaud – Music college – Ayyappan kovil road – Model school – Housing board-Chenkalchoola – Panavila – Bakery – Statue 2. Vanchiyoor Route 1 Vanchiyoor court junction - Rishimangalam - GeneralHospital - Pattor - vanchiyoor court Route 2 Vanchiyoor court junction - kaithamukku - kaithamukku post office - vanchiyoor court Route 3 Kaithamukku - chettikulangara - Ayurveda collage - danya remya theatre – kunnupuram road mathrbhumiroad - vanchiyoor court Route 4 Kaitha mukku - sreekandeshwaram – overbridge - vanchiyoor court Route 5 Vanchiyoor court - thakaraparambu - flyover - vanchiyoor court Route 6 Vanchiyoor court - sreevaraham pond – vanchiyoor court 3. Palayam Route 1 Corporation – PMG – Bartonhill – Thekkumudu jn – Miranda Jn – Vadayakkad – Palayam -Corporation Route 2 Corporation – Chandrasekharnair stadium – MLA hostel – General Hospital – Page 4 of 14 Eye hospital - Thampuranmukku jn – kunnukuzhi bridge – PMG – Corporation Route 3 Corporation – Palayam – Spencer – Vanrose jn – bakery – jubilee – Nandavanam – Museum Corporation