Page 25 - Mann Ki Baat English

Arun Krishnamurthy His passion for the environment started
- a man on a
mission to clean
lakes
Arun Krishnamurthy, founder of
Environmentalist Foundation of
India (EFI), embarked on a journey
to clean up the lakes in his early
20s. He left his high-paying job in
Google and founded
Environmentalist Foundation of
India in 2007, which has grown into
a movement that has helped to
restore water bodies in 15 States
and diversified to address other
environmental issues as well.
Scan this QR code to know the year, He also aims to build the next level
efforts of Arun Krishnamurthy of leadership at his foundation to take
for water conservation.
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in childhood at Mudichur in Chennai, a Rohan Kale :
locality then surrounded by water Rejuvenating Step
bodies. The natural environment around wells of
his house and its slow degradation,
Maharashtra - one
motivated him to volunteer for step at a time
conservation.
Days spent as a student volunteer “Our ancestors worked hard to
taught him how a NGO works, EFI was a make the stepwells for us, so that
purely volunteer-driven movement we can conserve water. But today,
between 2007 and 2011, largely involving
people consider these stepwells
students in lake clean-ups through
as a dumping ground. Hence, we
Arun's personal networks in Chennai,
started a campaign to preserve
Coimbatore and Hyderabad.
Krishnamurthy was the face of such the stepwells of Maharashtra.
volunteering efforts, a popular concept
From October 2020 to March 2021,
now in Chennai and many other cities.
I travelled across Maharashtra
It was in 2012 that EFI was registered as a
and identified 400 stepwells in this
wildlife conservation and habitat
restoration group. He was chosen for the 14000 KM journey. I brought
together travellers, trekkers,
Rolex Award for Enterprise the same
year. The non-profit trust has restored heritage explorers, archeologists
nearly 141 water bodies across 15 States. etc to decide the vision of this
The EFI's focus on restoration changed campaign.
after the government streamlined NGO
participation in 2014 with the water Till now we have successfully
security mission. With the collaboration mapped 1650 stepwells in
of the government, civil society, NGOs Maharashtra. Our next target is to
and industries, it became a success
get the architecture
model for lake conservation.
documentation ready for these
He is now involved in beach clean-ups stepwells which will include the
through EFI’s Samudhra project to
details about their creation,
mitigate the localized ocean trash
creator, purpose, etc. In this detail
pollution in coastal cities and has plans
study we are also collecting
for deep ocean cleaning too. In the next
few years he wants to invest more time photos and drone shots of the
in urban afforestation and has set a goal stepwells to understand the
to restore 50 lakes and ponds every structures better. Our main
objective is to identify and
execute the strategies to
up more environmental projects and
conserve these beautiful
make his dream of creating freshwater
habitats and trash-free zones on heritages and convert these into
Chennai’s beaches a reality. popular tourist destinations.”
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