TUI Anniversary - One Year of Spotfixing!

TUI gave a video presentation of their one year of spotfixing at the pechakucha night in Bangalore!

TUI in News-Tweet by Anand Mahindra

"Thanks for the sentiment, Mr Mahindra. However, TUI is about empowering the faceless anonymous citizen. Any awards or recognition would cripple the initiative. TUI's strength lies in its anonymity. It is an amazing high to go out and fix your own street with your own hands - the result is the reward. " ~ TUI

TUI's Inspiration ( One of Many)

TUI say that they were deeply inspired by how SR Rao cleaned up Surat in a matter of months.

His story is beautifully described in the book
'Making Breakthrough Innovation Happen' by Porus Munshi - How 11 Indians Pulled off the Impossible. 

Each of the stories is inpirational - but none as much as the Surat transformation (from the plague city to the country's second cleanest - in 18 months). It's a bit of a shame that story hasn't got more media attention and publicity. " - TUI

Listen to what breakthrough innovation expert, Porus Munshi, has to say about The Ugly Indian (an excerpt from the audio CD accompanying the book - "How 11 Indians Pulled off the Impossible")

"Porus says that there is no better reward for an author than when his book inspires something that makes a difference - and so he has chosen to devote a large part of the CD to TUI. He has visited Church Street several times through the transformation and has literally observed the change stage by stage." - TUI

TUI in News - BBC Radio Interviews An Ugly Indian

"Kaam Chalu Mooh Bandh is our motto, and we always have declined media interviews. However, we agreed to let a TUI volunteer speak to BBC World Service Radio today on strict condition of anonymity. BBC said that the TUI message needs to go out to their global audience, so we broke our 'silence' for this noble cause!" - TUI




You may also be interested to read,

BBC News - 'Ugly Indians clean up Bangalore

TUI Birthday - A Cartoon Birthday card

A  lovely birthday card for TUI by Jai.

TUI Birthday & Treasure hunt

The Ugly Indian turned 1 on Sat, Nov 12th 2011! That's 52 weekends of SpotFixing!
They celebrated on Saturday morning  with a Treaure Hunt in the MG Road/Church Street area. 

So what was The Ugly Indian Treasure Hunt?
Participants had to take 12 pictures of Ugly Spots on 4kms of footpath in Bangalore's city centre (anywhere on MG Road, Church Street, Brigade Road). The Ugliest pictures win.

The minimum requirement to be eligible for a prize was
- 2 photos of paan stains on walls
- 2 photos of garbage dumped on the road/footpath- 1 photo of a missing/broken Footpath slab
- 1 photo of a man urinating on a wall
- 1 photo of a stinking place where people urinate frequently

Participants had 4 hours to 'inspect' 4 kms of footpath to find this treasure.






Click here for more pictures of the Treasure Hunt

Lest we Forget how the 'Treasure Hunt' was one year ago - in 2010

Take a look at the Treasure Hunt competition Entries!

And the Result??

"The Winner of The Ugly Indian Treasure Hunt is the city of Bangalore/Bengaluru!
It successfully passed the 'Inspection Test' of over 50 meticulous treasure hunters - who spent 2 hours inspecting every inch of footpath.


It's true. Brigade Rd, MG Rd & Church St passed this tough test on Saturday.
- There are no open garbage dumps
- There are no missing footpath slabs
- There is no public urination (as there are WonderLOOs)
- There are no paan stains on walls (people still spit paan but it is directed into the 100+ tereBins available. Any stains that hit a wall are immediately cleaned or painted over by vigilant Ugly Indians).

It's something to be proud of.
TUI will work hard at maintaining it this way.
Yes, there are leakages and you will see the odd paan stain - but they will not survive."

~ TUI

TUI Birthday - The First spotfix - what got them Started

TUI approaches its FIRST BIRTHDAY on Nov 12th!
 In their own words here is how or what got them started!!

 

What really got us started 1 year ago was seeing this Ugly Spot on Church Street.

We could not understand how this was tolerated in the middle of Church Street (right opp Barton Centre, Amoeba, Ruby Tuesday, Saigon, Shrungar Shopping Centre, Indian Coffee House) - and how everyone we asked threw up their hands and said - it has ALWAYS been like this.

We wondered - why isn't someone doing something about it? Doesn't it matter? This is the city's prime restaurant street, for God's sake!




Then we discovered that there were 6 such large open dumps spread across the 1km long Church Street - that had garbage "23x7". And about 5-6 smaller dumps. They were part of the 'system'. The clearing lorry came at 9am everyday (they were prompt), the place remained clean for 1 hour at most, and then dumping began again. This was 'normal'! Everyone played their part - the dumpers and cleaners, and life went on. And nobody was willing to change it.

Church Street is a windy street - so the whole place looks a mess all day.
We felt that if these 6 Dumps were eliminated, the street would become less dirty.

It seemed like commonsense. It would be easy to criticise this 'spot' fixing approach as a 'Band-aid', but we felt that Some aid was better than No aid. How long should we wait for a Miracle Cure - better to start small, apply band-aids and small spotfixes, and improve the overall health of the street
 .

Click here for more Shocking pictures of Ugly Spots on Church Street taken in 2010.

There are 40 Major Ugly Spots, and another 20 minor spots. On a road that is barely 1 kilometre long.

And after the spot fixes this is how one of the spots look today!

Check out the more of TUI spotfix pictures and videos. 

.....more stories will follow with more posts by TUI....