It’s very recent and booming news that a team of foreigners, students from Japan have come over to our country to ‘clean up Dhaka’. They’ve even started their own page, titled ‘Clean Up Dhaka’ and have got a massive response from the population of Dhaka city. It all happened really fast, overnight the amount of support they got, overnight, overwhelmed even the starter of this project, Jawad Mubashwir.
They didn’t think that things would happen so fast, makes you think doesn’t it? Change is indeed inevitable, someone just has to get up there and start it, and Jawad was exactly that person that Bangladesh needed. He went abroad to study, if he wanted he could’ve never looked back and just carried on with his life but it was the love for his country and the love for the environment that brought him back and along with him some very willing friends from Japan, who wanted to be part of this change, this noble cause. Something to ponder on, why would they come here, leaving their country behind and coming here to clean up what we made dirty, It doesn’t really concern them does it? Maybe their love for the environment transcends notions of borders.
Our club, the GWEC decided to join hands in this noble work and we decided to clean up Asad Avenue.
On the 24th of August at 9 am we began our mission from the gate of our school, guided by our moderator Julian Malcolm Mendez sir, we along with the help of our A level students and teachers set our hands to work cleaning up our streets. It was tough but not impossible, and we proved just that. Shovels, gloves, plastic bags and down on the streets with just a handful of people, there were a lot of people just standing there, questioning what we were doing, why we were doing it. Some gave us encouragement whilst others had the audacity of saying that it is useless to do something like this. But that didn’t stop us, we were firm on our goals and firm on our love for the environment we live in. The leaders of tomorrow, but we start today or else this ‘tomorrow’ is never going to come. In a way we proved what the determination of the youth can do. It’s not about bragging, but setting an example that inspires someone out there, even if it is just one person because it was the thought of just one person that brought this whole thing together. The club persevered and we are proud that we were actually able to make a difference, we were able to attract people to this thing, the first hour went by and we thought maybe it would just be us and the people with camera taking videos and snaps but then swarming from here and there came students from different universities to help us out.
One of the contributors to this very blog and our ex student Abie Rawad Akhand is someone who deserves a special thanks for helping us out in every way possible, he is a very active member of our blog and he writes in his free time to contribute to other news sources, he is someone who shares the very same agenda as us. We were short on hands but we hurdled through it. Raising awareness to people, picking every little cigarette butt, every little peanut peel, we did it all. On that day no one went ‘eww’ no one felt ashamed of bending over to pick up someone else’s trash, no one had an unnecessary feeling of ‘high class’ in them, one thought brought us all together and made us forget all of our pretences, a thought for a better tomorrow.
A lot of people have been commenting about this thing, they’ve been saying that it is so shameful that foreigners have to come and clean our country, maybe we should simply get this out of our head, these man made concepts of borders, maybe we should realise that this isn’t my world, this isn’t your world, this is our world, it’s about time we came together and realised that, it’s about time we understood that together we can make a difference. These people they say this whilst they sit behind their computer screens and sip coffee, maybe just posting a Facebook status isn’t enough anymore, heck, when was it ever enough? Your opinions have been heard, the awareness has been raised, it is time you got down to do something practical. When you see a fire you don’t sit on Facebook and update a status saying that someone should douse that fire, you simply go and put it out yourself. The Earth, the world you live in, is burning. The question is, will we be the ones to put out the fire? Or will we continue to let the earth burn up like a tinder box while we casually sip coffee in our air conditioned rooms.
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