For a better society

What do you do if you find a pothole on your way to college, office or home? Most of us think that the officials will take care of them and skips it right? But these four people Karthik, Vishal, Vihar, and Nagaraju fill the potholes and make the way easy for commuters. The group started ‘We Can Make a Change’ campaign and through this, they cleared more than 150 potholes in the city.

Speaking with The Hans India, Karthik, one of the founders, ‘We Can Make a Change’ shared what driven them to start this campaign.Karthik said, “When I was working as a techie in Bangalore, I noticed many potholes on roads remain unnoticed for more than 45 days.

Later, I realised that why should I wait for someone to come and fix the problem and decided to fix it my own. I explained this idea to my friends and all of them said, it was not our work to do. Later, I came to Hyderabad and spotted the same problem of potholes in the city and this time I started an online campaign ‘We Can Make a Change’ through Facebook with the support of my friends Vishal, Vihar, and Nagaraju in June 2017,”

Explaining about how it works, Karthik said, “We take requests from people online, verify the place and fix the problem on every Saturday morning between
4:30 am and 7 am to avoid traffic issues for people. We are spending our own money for the raw material. We started as a four-member group last year, and now we are more than 50 members in the city. Until today, we have fixed more than 150 potholes in the city to provide an easy way for commuters,”

It is also not an easy way to buy raw material in limited quantities and one should take officials permissions to buy it. “We don’t get the raw material in small quantities and we need to buy in bulk. We need to talk to the officials about the use of material and need to take several permissions.

The GHMC and city Traffic Police officials have participated with us on many occasions and appreciated our work,” shared Karthik.
Telangana IT Minister KT Rama Rao also appreciated the work by We Can Make a Change group members. Apart from filling the potholes, they are also distributing food for the poor during the weekends. The team also organised many medical camps in Rajanna Sircilla district.

“We adopted one Anganvadi center in Jillela village and modified it as a play school with our own funds. We also make ugly spots into beautiful by painting them. We are providing ‘Green Net’ shelters in bus stands to get rid of summer woes for people,” shared Karthik.
Karthik concluded, “Initially, people didn’t understand what we are doing with these activities but after explaining the benefits, they are supporting us very well.

Our main focus is on root level issues and we are working on waste management. We also adopted a village Venugopal Poor and explaining the villagers how to utilise kitchen waste and plastic waste into organic compo.”