On the International Coastal Day, I was a part of the huge beach cleaning campaign that took place in Surat. I was a part of the beach cleaning that took place specifically in Dumas, where we were expected to clean the trash that had been dumped on the Dumas Beach by collecting and gathering it from the various places on the beach where it had been carelessly thrown.

Much more important and impactful than the physical exertion, the service aspect of the experience had a small, but accumulative, impact on the environment. As a group, my friends and I were able to find a number of different types of trash, such as polythene bags, caps, bottles, and packets, rubber remains of gloves, tin cans and nets, etc., which would have degraded over hundreds of years, and only into smaller, more harmful particles at that.

Learning Outcomes

LO2: Demonstrate that challenges have been undertaken, developing new skills:

There were no challenges in cleaning the beach as the smell, the waste was what people caused them and it was what we had taken the responsibility to do. The major problem besides cleaning was we were not able to instantly change the behavioral patterns of the people living there. Even while cleaning the beach, some people were throwing their waste having no regard to the consequences it catered to. Cleaning the beach was a temporary solution while eradicating the origin of the problem was something which was very hard which is why in order to overcome it, we decided to share awareness as well as communicate with the people in the surrounding to persuade them.

LO 4: Show commitment to and perseverance in CAS experience:

All the challenges like the weather, the smell, and inter-group conflicts made it difficult for us to complete the task. There were many times when we just felt like giving up but it was important for us to stay committed and show perseverance to the task so that we can achieve our goal of collecting as much garbage from the beach as possible. Seeing everyone work right from teachers to support staff to juniors motivated us to stay committed.

LO 5 Demonstrate the skills and recognize the benefits of working collaboratively

According to the situation and people involved, working with others can be various levels of difficult. Working with people comes effortlessly to me because I value cooperation, communication, and teamwork. Combining various points of view and expertise, in my opinion, can produce more interesting and helpful outputs.

LO 6: Demonstrate engagement with issues of global significance:

Pollution is a major issue worldwide. Its is our duty to do whatever we can do to cater to this issue. Numbers of people throwing garbage around has boosted up. And people thinking of actually cleaning it has decreased. We have government policies and laws as restrictions but we don’t care. Any numbers of camping’s have not changed people’s mindset.