CLEAN INDIA, BEAUTIFUL INDIA

The Amala Bharatam Campaign (ABC) is a program aimed at improving public health and at restoring India's physical beauty. Through this campaign, Amma is calling on all citizens of India to embrace practical new initiatives to clean India's public spaces, promote health through hygiene, sort garbage, recycle, and properly dispose of waste. The campaign is also working to make people more aware of the need to avoid littering, spitting and urinating in public, and to maintain environmental cleanliness. Since its inception in September 2010, the awareness campaign has already reached more than four million people. Through ABC, volunteers are cleaning public areas, constructing public toilets and spreading awareness in schools regarding the proper way to dispose of trash. In Kerala, where the campaign was first launched, clean-up drives have been conducted in every major town and city. The campaign has already spread to Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and New Delhi, where several high-ranking government officials, including the Chief Minister of New Delhi, Mrs. Sheila Dixit, as well as the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister and the Union Minister for Agriculture, personally participated in clean-up drives.

ETW is also distributing handkerchiefs to more than one million school children and educating them to use them instead of spitting on the ground.

ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS CAMPAIGN

More than 200 clean-up drives have already been undertaken, with more than 15,000 volunteers participating. The fourth Sunday of each month has been designated as Clean Sunday, with clean-up drives to be held on this day every month. The campaign is intended to ultimately spread throughout India, with Amma calling upon citizens to form small committees, each responsible for a stretch of two kilometers. "A chain of such committees could really bring about a massive transformation," she has commented. "These committees should ensure their localities have trashcans in various places as well as signs telling
people not to throw trash on the roadside or to spit. The waste should be collected regularly and properly
disposed of."
Amma has also stated that the Mata Amritanandamayi Math* is ready to take up the responsibility of constructing toilets and installing trash cans in government schools and along roads all over India, if it has the support and cooperation of state and local governments. Amma is also calling upon all citizens of India to take to recognize in principle that the earth is the mother of humanity and that cleanliness is godliness, and to pledge to work with dedication for the realization of environmental cleanliness and hygiene. So far, this pledge has been taken by more than one million people throughout India.

The Amala Bharatam Campaign has the potential to have a powerful impact on India's public health goals. Lack of sanitation is the world's leading cause of infection.

*Mata Amritanandamayi Math is Amma's India-based spiritual and humanitarian organization. Embracing the World as a global network of humanitarian projects grew out of the India-based projects of Mata Amritanandamayi Math, which continues to manage Embracing the World projects in India.

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