Excerpts taken from ARCNews
November is Foundation Month. Contributions to the RI Foundation is crucial to being able to acquire matching grants funds, enabling clubs to make a lasting difference in the world. This article is a great demonstration of the importance of global and district grants and how they can be used.
Like many coastal areas around the world today, the beaches in Chennai, India, attract large amounts of plastic debris. For teenage surfer and local resident Karan Chakravarthy, the presence of plastic at his favorite surf spots was distressing. So, he decided to do something about it.
Chakravarthy joined other volunteers to collect trash with a nonprofit called Namma Beach, Namma Chennai (which translates to “Our Beach, Our Chennai”). In 2021, the organization removed 176,000 pounds of plastic waste from Chennai’s beaches. But Chakravarthy felt that more could be done.
Karan Chakravarthy used ArcGIS Survey123 to record data about beaches in Chennai, India, that are consistently littered with plastic. (Photo courtesy of Karan Chakravarthy.)
He contacted his grandfather, Mandyam Venkatesh, who lives in San Diego, California, and obtained a $5,000 grant from Venkatesh’s Del Mar/Solana Beach Rotary club to further support Namma Beach, Namma Chennai. Through his grandfather’s Rotary connections, Chakravarthy also met Carl Nettleton, the founder of OpenOceans Global, a San Diego-based organization that employs geospatial technology and citizen science to help stop the flow of plastic to the world’s oceans.
Nettleton hopes that citizen scientists all over the world will do what Chakravarthy has done and record data for OpenOceans Global about beaches that are consistently fouled by plastic trash. In particular, he would like GIS practitioners to take the lead.
The OpenOceans Global article is live online. It features one of our long-time members, Venky Venkatesh’s grandson in India. Esri also prints and distributes one million copies worldwide. It’s out next week. Who knew anyone still printed those quantities. To read the complete article, click here.