‘My Piece of Chennai' is a volunteer-run initiative to provide Chennai residents with the necessary information, tools and support to help solve civic issues (such as issues of urban planning, uncleared garbage, non-functional street lights, etc), and help maintain their community effectively. The goal of this initiative is to help communities improve the conditions of their local environments, leading to improved quality of life, heath and well-being. We wish to bring about a paradigm shift among the people of Chennai, where spaces and amenities in disrepair, instead of being problems to live with, become opportunities to create stronger local networks of concerned neighborhood.
My Piece of Chennai conducted a survey of Chennai residents recently to determine the level of participation in civic communities and to understand the factors that influenced participation. Our survey results showed that public participation in urban civic infrastructure issues is hindered by a lack of easy access to information, cumbersome processes, and a belief that individual effort will not make a difference. We envision this initiative as a website driven tool that will help you overcome these obstacles by making it easy for you to:
-
•Create awareness of a civic issue that you identify in your neighborhood
-
•Discover and connect with people in your area who will want to work with you on the common goal of getting the neighborhood problem fixed
-
•Find useful information about how such issues can be fixed, contact information for the relevant authorities, etc.
-
•Collaborate with people you connected with to identify and distribute tasks to fix this issue, thereby, making the cumbersome processes easier to navigate
-
•Document your efforts to help solve the issue and contribute to a growing knowledge base that will help other groups/individuals looking to solve similar issues in the future
Whether you are an already active community member or someone who wants to make a difference but don't know how, My Piece of Chennai is here to strengthen your endeavors to build a better environment for your community. If you would like to learn more, feel free to email us at contact@mypieceofchennai.org.
We would love to hear from you! You can also find out more about volunteering to help build the My Piece of Chennai service on the Get Involved page.
