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Timeline
Change Is Us (CIU) is a youth-led initiative, co-founded by Akshat Shah and Shubh Mehta. Since its inception in 2019, CIU has embarked upon the endeavour to create environmental and social awareness and change. Akshat and Shubh approached the BMC who arranged for supplies like dustbins, ghamelas and gloves and CIU had its debut beach clean-up on July 21, 2019, with 18 volunteers.
Fast forward to today, our largest cleanup had 650+ volunteers. It has been a tumultuous journey since then. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, we had to shift our operations online, with webinars, social media posts to spread awareness, online competitions etc. This is when CIU decided to widen its scope beyond beach cleanups and vowed to leave an indelible mark on the world. -
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Art for Earth and Ink for Earth
In 2020, when the world stopped in its tracks, Change is Us gave art lovers and aspiring writers a platform to display their mesmerising talents. Art for Earth and Ink for Earth were online events for people to express their love for the environment. Participants had the opportunity to win amazing all-inclusive handcrafted eco-hampers from GoKind. The creative extravaganza which resulted in a vibrant tapestry of art and words, was judged by a very distinguished panel of judges. The event showed how, even in times of tragedy, our propensity for creativity shines through.
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Happiness Drives
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and consequent lockdown, a large portion of the population found itself deprived of basic necessities. To try and tackle this, CIU conducted food distribution drives to distribute food and ration kits to help those in need. With the help of our sponsors, crowdfunding, awareness campaigns, volunteers and collaborators like the Musafir Project and Feed the Need, we successfully participated in 10+ food drives, across Mumbai.
CIU has also carried out 3 successful sanitary pad distribution drives where we distributed 16,500+ pads to break the stigma that surrounds feminine hygiene and increase women’s access to feminine hygiene products. We have conducted 3 orphanage drives, 2 old age home drives and 3 drives for the physically disabled. In these drives, we played games and organised activities for the people we visited. -
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Our work till date..
Despite our ups and downs, we have had beach cleanups every week since the inception of CIU, barring the lockdown. We have had several volunteers across various age groups participate in beach cleanups, webinars and happiness drives. It has been a long journey and there’s so much more to come, so stay tuned.
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