By SOPHIE FOSTER
Thursday, November 06, 2008

A DOZEN years ago, all it had was a "funky logo, a $500 TV ad, a radio challenge and instructions in the newspaper".

At the time, the Clean Up Fiji campaign organisers crossed their fingers, hoping that about 500 people would turn up to help clean Suva's waterfront.

The results of the first-ever campaign exceeded everyone's expectations -- with about 6000 people turning up and collecting around 1000 tonnes of rubbish.

"Supplies were quickly exhausted and participants then brought their own bags and made piles for later collection," said Clean Up Fiji founder Caz Tebbutt Dennis.

From that beginning in 1996, Clean Up Fiji has turned into "the greatest mass participation community service event in Fiji's modern history".

"Participation means ownership: It helps individuals and groups to experience the problem first hand, empowering them to change it, and ultimately making it socially unacceptable to litter," she says.

It's with pride that organisers speak of the fact that 12 years on, an entire generation of children have grown up with Clean Up Fiji.

"Some say the environment is not ours, we have simply borrowed it from our children," said Ms Tebbutt Dennis.

"And today's youth are the leaders of tomorrow."

The Clean Up Fiji campaign is an officially registered member of the Clean Up the World network, from which they source reference materials and ideas. But the local operation is in every other way independent, with its own funding and management.

Across the world, the need to "think globally, act locally" has seen 35 million people take part in the Clean Up the World campaign.

For Fiji, the early success with the 6000 people turning out in support of a cleaner environment was to gain momentum rapidly.

During the second year of the campaign, 1997, Clean Up Fiji went national.

"Organisers were stunned when 23,000 people turned out. Some rural areas had phenomenal turn outs, including Taveuni with 1000+ and Levuka with 400+," Ms Tebbutt Dennis said.

"Local organisers called talkback radio in tears, saying they had never witnessed such community spirit. That is not all: An amazing 150,000 cubic feet of rubbish was collected, including the underside of a bus pulled out of a drain in Savusavu and 40 tonnes of rubbish collected from Wailoaloa Beach in Nadi -- some of it had been there for a decade."

According to the Clean Up Fiji team, if all that rubbish was piled from end to end, it would have stretched for 47 kilometres - that's about halfway from Suva to Sigatoka.

Again, Ms Tebbutt Dennis says more than 70 per cent of those who turned up were children.

So it was that the following year, a Clean Up Fiji Schools day was organised. This saw 50,000 school-age children, supported by the Ministry of Education, turn up to clean their immediate environment. In fact, a quarter of all the schools in the country participated in some form.

By the time, the campaign reached 2003, Clean Up Fiji began to see a leadership shift.

It saw "the emergence of grassroots leadership in the Clean Up Fiji campaign, with youth groups, church groups, neighbourhood groups and community groups driving registrations -- communities taking ownership of their communities.

Many enduring clean-up groups were formed who meet regularly to clean up their own environments," she said.

From then the campaign went from strength to strength. The 2005 campaign saw registrations reach 15,000 before the event.

"More than 30,000 people on the day ... 6000 50kg sacks and 12,000 pairs of gloves to help teams clean up," she said, adding that they saw "more than 500 teams, including 320 villages ... teams from business, government, youth, church and sporting groups came out in force behind the campaign".

The next year, the popularity of the Clean Up Fiji campaign grew once more, seeing 25,000 people register before the event, 41,000 turn up on the day in 600 teams.

"The Prime Minister led the way, bringing his family with him," she said, with the campaign using 10,000 50kg sacks and 15,000 pairs of gloves distributed.

This year, the campaign is expected to draw even more people out in a bid to save Fiji's environment. The day itself has been set aside for Saturday November 22, from 8am to 11am nationwide.

The campaign is expected to be launched tomorrow with organisers hoping to again attract as many young people as possible.

There are television commercials, a radio and print campaign, and a crump dancing group is featured along with an original jingle.

Area co-ordinators are expected to be appointed to manage the campaign and logistics locally and the campaign will this year also go online with the site due to be launched alongside the campaign launch tomorrow.

And for the first time, a Green Up Fiji drive will also happen at the same time, with participants encouraged to form tree planting groups as well as clean up teams.

With a dozen years experience, an energetic team of volunteers, a secretariat, media awareness and technology on its side, the 2008 Clean Up Fiji Day campaign is expected to see some of its best results ever.

That's pretty good for a campaign that started with nothing more than a "funky logo, a $500 TV ad, a radio challenge and instructions in the newspaper".

Article reproduced courtesy of Fiji Times Online - http://www.fijitimes.com/story.aspx?id=105385