On Pedestrian day, Woman power come forward to clean traffic mess.

PUNE, India ¾ Oct 02, 2017 ¾ City based Global Shapers Pune celebrated Pedestrian day at more than seven major junctions across Pune. Out of seven junctions, four road junctions were led by girls. 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 requested citizens to walk for their own safety and healthy life on his Birthday.” said Devendra Jani, Shaper at Global Shapers Pune who headed this project. 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 follow traffic rule for safety, Appreciate those following rules, survey footpaths and signing campaign for a Pedestrian Friendly Pune. They educated citizens about 300 cameras installed across Pune junctions which are tracking traffic defaulters and e-challan would be issued to those. Teams also raised issues of non-working signal through the online platform of PMC. Those bikers on Footpath where shamed and they readily agreed to move from footpath to road. Our posters also mentioned Schools & Hospitals falling under ‘No Horn Zone’ and made them aware that honking is illegal outside Schools and hospitals. They also appreciated those citizens who were wearing helmet, seat belt and following rules by giving them Hi-five, a hand written thank you note and flowers. Citizens were delighted and smiles when kids were doing this task. Through different junctions they managed to reach more than 4900 citizens with the help of 70 volunteers. Citizens whole heartily appreciated volunteers and requested to do more of such campaigns to make Pune’s roads safer for Pedestrians.

After Facebook invite was created, it got goodresponse and decided to take place in seven major road junctions across the city. Swacch Pune Swacch bharat team with school kids was magical at University junction. At Kharadi junction, Kids from Labor camp gave ‘Thank You’ notes to people who wore helmets, and motivated them to keep this good habit alive. LetsRise NGO and EcoAd came together to create awareness about pedestrian safety, traffic management solutions to ensure safe movement of pedestrians. Pedestrian day was just a trigger and it turned to be a moment when they were joined by young change makers from LetsRISE at Deccan Road junction, Volunteers of Swachh Pune at Magarpatta Road, Faza Foundatoin Pune team at Kharadi Junction, EcoAd at City Pride Junction and Kalyani residents at Kalyani nagar Junction.

Traffic Police Department was actively involved at all the junctions and approved the campaign without any delay. “We are always hapy to support NGO who are woring for betterment of the city. He appricae hat we are leading a good cause” said Dr. Pravin Mundhe, DCP Traffic (IPS). This initiative was also supported by Global Shapers across India viz. Lacknow hub, Imphal Hub and Chandigarh hub.