ApartmentADDA’s 12th Workshop was held on 19th March, 2016 in TERI Auditorium, Bangalore. This visionary workshop targeted at Management Committee members of Apartment Complexes was again a huge success with 100+ Management Committee members attending the workshop.
This workshop was organised in association with I Got Garbage (A Mindtree Initiative). Co-Sponsors for workshop were 360 Ride, Hi Care and BetterPlace.
Presentation of Rise High Award 2016 by Shri P C Mohan
Mr P.C Mohan, Honorable Minister of Parliament from Bangalore, was a part of the workshop to present the RISE HIGH AWARD 2016. This is India’s only award recognizing neighborhood initiatives. More than 200 entries came in from across India. Among the shortlisted 35, there were several Bangalore Apartments including Brigade Metropolis, Salarpuria Splendor, Sobha Opal. The award was however presented to Blue Ridge Apartments, Pune. The first runner up was The Imperial, Mumbai, India’s highest residential towers. The second runner up was Palm Greens, Ahmedabad.
Dr Pravin from Blue Ridge, Pune was in our midst who collected the award on the behalf of the Management Committee and residents of Blue Ridge. Dr Pravin talked about the various neighbourhood initiatives being carried on in his Apartment, ranging from installation of solar power on rooftops, waste management, to internet classes for the elderly.
Mr P C Mohan along with Mr. Lakshminarayana, Chairman of Town Planning and Improvement talked about their plans of making Bangalore a better place to live.
BESCOM session on Solar Panel installation on Apartment Rooftops
Mr Satish and Mr Nataraj from BESCOM, in an extremely interactive session, described how apartments can become self-sufficient with respect to electricity. He gave the details of solar installation in rooftops, explained how power generated gets fed into the grid. Some facts:
- Per installed KW, the cost of installation would come to around Rs. 90k.
- The maintenenace cost is almost zero and if the apartment becomes a net exporter then BESCOM would replenish the society at Rs. 9.56.
- In 4-5 years any apartment usually would break even for the capital expenditure incurred.
Below is the video recording of the session by BESCOM officials.
Initiatives outside Apartment Gates – Panel Discussion
This session which was moderated by Mr. Satyam Gambhir from I Got Garbage (A Mindtree Initiative), delved deep into how citizens of Apartment Complexes can solve neighborhood issues outside their gates, how they can garner support for causes both inside the gates and outside. The panelists were Ms Malini Parmar, a waste management expert, Member SWMRT, 2bin1bag.in & Kasa Muktha Bellandur; Mr Arvind Keerthi, an urban activist on Lake Rejuvenation; Mr Subbaiah, founder member of CiFoS a citizen group from Sanjaynagar and Ms Meera, co-founder Citizen Matters.
“Local is where all problems are. It’s very important to document information and communicate everything to other residents around you. If you communicate the problems properly, then you will always gather support around your cause”, said Meera. She gave the example of community activity in Basavanagar, where enough citizens have come to not only help out in their own initiatives but also help 5 other neighboring wards to be Plastic Free.
The question of how to tackle mafia who deal with garbage, etc. came up. Ms Malini described how she gets threats all the time, but one just has to continue the work they are doing and no body ever comes to stop the good work. Ms. Malini also gave more details on the widely accepted 2 bin 1 bag method of garbage segragation and how they started their waste management saga from her own apartment which now has developed it into a pan Bangalore initiative.
Mr. Arvind Keerthi mentioned how lake rejuvenation can be done through means like getting CSR funds from corporates to be donated for such neighborhood initiatives. Mr Subbaiah gave some valuable inputs on how apartment MC members can start with small initiatives and then make them really big. He gave example of Sanjaynagar, where he had started an initiative of cleaning up roads. It started with cleaning 1 road with participation of 1 apartment. Now many apartment complexes have joined this drive and now this is an initiative being practiced across Sanjaynagar.
See the below video for this engrossing entire panel discussion.
Session on Collaborative Development of Cities by Meera (Co Founder, Citizen Matters)
Meera, co-founder Citizen Matters, explained with example of Late PM Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri’s appeal to the nation to skip a meal during chronic food shortages in India, how one can inspire citizens to become a part of the solution instead of being a part of the problem. Speaking of citizen intiatives, Ms. Sangeeta Chadha, Prestige Kensington mentioned how they do not allow any paper pamphlet advertisements inside their gates in order to save paper. All pamphlets are sent as emails to residents.
On the topic of taking collaborative action towards various neighborhood issues, Meera announced an initiative: Collaborative journalism on civic issues
This is a pilot for ApartmentADDA users where any user can highlight a pressing public problem that the user or other residents together would like to solve. It could be drain encroachment, or fixing a bad garbage transfer point, etc. Citizen matters will work with the user to collect data/document/ evidence and track the developments till a solution is found.
Citizens who want to work as a part of this initiative can mail at edit@citizenmatters.in with your suggested topic.
To all our readers: What do you think of our sessions? Do you have any suggestions, comments? Post your thoughts and comments below.
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