On Pedestrian day, Pune Citizens pledged to walk only on footpath
PUNE, India Oct 02, 2015 : City based Global Shapers Pune celebrated Pedestrian day at six major junctions within Pune and PCMC. Taking inspiration from Mahatma Gandhi’s Dandi march, they wanted to encourage citizens of Pune to join a movement of Road safety and awareness. “Mahatma Gandhi walked for whole nation, while we request citizens to walk for their own safety and healthy life on his Birthday.”, said Devendra Jani, Shaper at Global Shapers Pune. While the whole India was working on Swatch Bharat (Clean India) movement, Pune shapers were working to clean road mess in our city. They approached citizens to take a pledge – ‘Whenever we walk, we only walk on footpath and whenever we drive, we only drive on road’.
Their objective was to encourage citizens to embrace walking in daily life, survey footpaths and Signing campaign for Pedestrian Friendly Pune. They educated citizens about Schools & Hospitals falling under ‘No Horn Zone’ and made them aware that honking is illegal outside hospitals. They also appreciated those citizens who were wearing helmet, seat belt and following rules by giving them Hi-five.
Initially, the campaign was planned for just one junction. But after Facebook invite was created, it got tremendous response and decided to take place in Six major road junctions across the city. Pedestrian day was just a trigger and it turned to be a moment when they were joined by 
young change makers from LetsRISE at Karve Road junction, Volunteers of Swachh Pune and Mentors from MentorTogether at Magarpatta Road, Students of Symbiosis School of Economics at S.B. Road, Students of Army Institute of Technology at PCMC Wanwadi junction, Pune running group at PCMC Kokane Chawk and Pune shapers at Viman Nagar junction. RTO Police Department was actively involved at all the junctions and approved the campaign without any delay. The RTO flying-sward at Karve Nagar immediately acted on their inputs on ‘Pedestrian Signal not working’ and ‘Two wheeler sign board not clearly visible’. They also plan to submit the survey reports to local ward authorities to take urgent steps and improve the conditions of footpaths near these junctions.
More than 200 citizens signed the pledge and ~12000 citizens were reached on road. Citizens whole heartily appreciated volunteers and requested to do more of such campaigns to make Pune’s roads safer. This initiative was done under Right To Walk project.
The Global Shapers Community is an initiative of the World Economic Forum – an independent, not-for-profit international organization – to engage young people and help bring fresh ideas and innovative, entrepreneurial solutions to some of the most pressing global challenges.
#pedestrian #footpath #traffic #roadsafety Global Shapers Community- Pune Hub Global Shapers #globalshapers Let’s Rise Karve Road , Swachh Pune Mentortogether Magarpatta , Symbiosis School of EconomicsSenapati Bapat Road , Pune Army Institute of Technology, Pune PCMCWanowrie Global Shapers Community- Pune Hub
