Continuing our partnership with the NGOS Zero Waste Himalayas and Darjeeling Prerna, we will be leading the Himalayan Cleanup initiative in 8 Mile for the second year running. This year we will be enrolling new schools in the clean-up and awareness drive. Also, as a departure from the past cleanups we will be going ZeroWaste where-in none of the items that is picked up as part of the cleaning process gets dumped in the landfill or contributes to the pollution of the air, water and soil in any form.

Also, our ongoing work with Salesian College, Sonada is bearing fruits and recently, we also got covered in The Statesman for the plastic bricks initiative project.

https://epaper.thestatesman.com/m5/2132660/NB-Extra/3rd-May-2019#dual/3/1

Thank you all for your support. We will keep updating you about the progress of the campaign.

May the forest be with you all!

Utsow

Dear Donors,

This is to share with you all a pre-wedding photoshoot that features the cleaned-up section of our 8 Mile Khola and the surrounding areas of Rajahatta and  8 Mile villages.

Returning the river to its pristine self gives the local folks the opportunities to benefit from the ever expanding alternative-tourism industry that is on lookout for new unexplored places.

A word of caution though. Tourism if open and unregulated does more harm than good. There are chances that it would destroy the delicate social and ecological fabric of the place being 'explored'. It's a double edged sword which needs to be manoeuvred deftly.

We intend to grasp the essence of tourism and ensure that what is practiced is responsible and regenerative (being sustainable is not enough right now).
We still have a long way to go before we are able to overcome the waste management crisis in our area but with the help of funds coming in through tourism, the revival rate of the river would be much swifter.

Right now it feels good, really good to see change happening!

The video is pinned to the top of our Facebook feedback: https://www.facebook.com/save8milekhola/

Enjoy the video and do not forget to pat yourself too because your donation towards our cause has helped us reached this stage. :)

Sending you all much love and luck from our forest!

Regards,

Utsow

Dear Donors,

Thank you all for your support and encouragement.

It has been an uphill task for us to revive the river but we have not given up on the crusade yet.

Last year, the shutdown of 4 months due to the Gorkhaland agitation hit us hard and we had to pause the campaign for a bit. It took us a while to sustain our own project (TIEEDI) once things crawled back to normal (politically and economically). However, now we are relatively stable with our permaculture project of responsible and sustainable tourism and its unique offering to the tourists (Tripadvisor, today rates us as the No. 1 Speciality Lodging in the whole of Darjeeling).

Sharing some latest updates that are related to our crusade to save the river:

1. We have been working with the volunteers in the Save8MileKhola campaign to keep the awareness alive and also to conduct small but impactful campaigns like the 'Plastic Bricks Campaign'. A good number of folks in the village have signed up to contain all their plastic waste in plastic bottles which we are collecting to use while constructing our next mud hut at Tieedi. You will find some pictures and writeups about this campaign in our Save8MileKhola Facebook page. This helps reduce the flow of waste to the river to a large extent.
2. The other important landmark in Save8MileKhola has been the involvement of the local schools and colleges. We conducted a 7 day residential socio-economic workshop for the NSS students of Salesian College, Sonada. We were successful in merging the social outreach programme of the college with saving of the river. Pls find below the the detailed account of the workshop along with the pictures:
   Salesian College Socio-Ecological Outreach Programme:
   1.   Day 1
   2.   Day 2
   3.   Day 3
   4.   Day 4
   5.   Day 5
   6.  Day 6
   7.  Day 7
3. The upstream village of Rajahatta too has started a cleanup campaign and now there are trash cans placed along both the walking trails that lead up to the village (by the banks of two tributaries of 8 Mile river). Attached is a newspaper article that covered their initiative where the whole village once gathered to clean up the trails.

At this milestone we would like to thank you all once again, as without your timely help we probably would not have been able to sustain the campaign.

What next?

We realised that to be able to sustain the everyday activity of compost collection, plastic bricks collection and building of larger facility to take in the other kinds of waste, we need help from the government too. We have reached out to them and have received positive response from them so far. We will soon be presenting a project plan to them of a comprehensive step by step way to convert 8 Mile into a waste free green village. Will share the project plan with you all too once it is ready to be presented to the government.

That's all for our end as of now. We will keep sharing the updates of the progress as we climb further.

We promise you that difficult as it may be at times to sustain the campaign we will not give up on the river! We hope to someday invite you for a swim or even to drink the fresh elixir of water straight from the river.

If you need more details or would like to be involved further to share the campaign details with your friends and family, pls feel free to reach out to us @ 8250612067. You can also share the crowdfunding link on your social media or through email.

Thanks and Regards,

Utsow