3 Comments to “Blog”

1. Michael Healey says:

   January 14, 2012 at 4:08 pm

   To whom it may concern,

   I came across the Responsible Citizens movement in Clay Shirky’s Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age, and was immediately enlightened.

   I’m currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina having graduated with a PR degree in England. My goal was originally to learn the language and although that still remains true, I have another ambition. Mirroring your efforts as a social responsible citizen here in the Capital.

   There is a huge amount of dog excrement and trash in the city, and there is no real governance for it. Unfortunately it has become accepted to not clean up after a pet’s mess or travel a short distance to a nearby bin to dispose of waste. Not only does this create health issues (an issue the Argentinians appear to be unaware of), but it’s an indictment on an other beautiful city.

   I want to contribute to making this City a cleaner place to live and to walk, and I feel following in your footsteps would lead to a civic value for communities here and a longer-term goal of behavioral change. I have written a blog to try and ignite some interest (see below), but it would great to receive some feedback as to how you harnessed engagement in order to make Pakistan a cleaner place to live for the community.

   With regards,

   Michael Healey
   http://prmonitions.com/

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2. Jalal Hussain says:

   January 26, 2012 at 12:23 pm

   Dear Michael,

   Thank you for your wonderful comment. The key to try and ignite some interest is quite simple really. You get a bunch of like minded individuals together, even if they are four or five, go out on the streets and start cleaning up.

   People will automatically take note and wonder what’s going on. Once they ask you, you explain to them the purpose behind your actions, even if you get one person inspired to do what you’re doing you’ve done a brilliant job as that person will go and inspire someone else. Its a domino effect, a chain reaction so to speak.

   You mobilize the youth through the social media, in this day and age thats a key medium to organise and coordinate such events.

   Pick an area which you feel is very dirty. Get the locals involved as well. Speak to them, visit their homes, interact with shopkeepers and educate them about cleanliness and also explain the sociopolitical context behind your actions.

   People need to understand that their problems are their own and no one else is going to come and solve them. The initiative needs to come from the people themselves. That is the symbolic value behind picking up trash; you show that you have taken responsibility for a problem that you have created yourselves and are now taking care of it.

   Once word gets around and your message spreads, the local administration will tap into the energy and get involved too. This is what happened with us. Our local government is quite indifferent but once they saw that citizens had taken up to cleaning the streets up themselves, they put up dustbins and also sent in government workers to clean the streets.

   I hope this answers your query Michael! Keep in touch!

   Jalal Hussain
   Secretary General, Zimmedar Shehri
   jalalhussain@hotmail.com

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3. Shad says:

   February 9, 2012 at 12:57 pm

   To be hensot, i didn’t read the entire post but i got the general idea that the waffle plan is older that Roland Young. I grew up in upstream Wild Rice River (MN) and near my parents home there was a small project built there over 30 years ago where the purpose of the project was to hold back water to help on spring flooding. The idea obviously isn’t new….. just hard to impliment when it involves “my land” that will hold the water back

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