https://www.facebook.com/nammabeachnammachennai/
Help Wanted: Volunteer Program
Below, you will be receiving an overview of what Namma Beach, Namma Chennai does and stand for. Here, we already wanted to make clear that we need your help. In order to create a future for the next generation, we need to make a change now.
In India, focusing on Chennai, there is a huge waste problem that has caused many beautiful environments like the beach, rivers, fields, streets and even homes to be polluted.
Virginie Vlaminck and team is looking for volunteers who are interested in making changes in their community, both to the environment and the mindset of others. This relates to teaching classes about hygiene and pollution, teaching English, organising beach clean ups and campaigns while aiding Ms. Vlaminck in any other new endeavours. Most importantly we are passionate people to join her on her adventure in creating a greener future for everyone.
We are searching for students from all over the world who will be offered board and food by Virginie Vlaminck herself in exchange for their volunteer work for a minimum of four weeks to maximum 6 months. If you are interested or have any questions, feel free to email us via the ‘contact’ page on this website or send us a message through our above mentioned Facebook page.
We are looking forward to hearing from any and all interested parties.
Making Chennai Beautiful
If you love nature, Chennai can be heartbreaking. Garbage is everywhere you look. 
Over the Christmas holidays in 2011-2012, I decided to use my photography to educate my neighbourhood on the need for a clean environment in the streets and at the nearby beach.
I photographed people living here and used their pictures in banners showing a dirty and a clean beach. I placed trash bins at the entrance of the beach and painted them with slogans. At first, I cleaned up the beach with the help of some other expats who live in the neighbourhood. To increase the effect, I recently hired some people who work for the Corporation of Chennai. After their shift, they work for us and clean up the beach daily. I use the proceeds of my photography workshops and exhibitions to fund the costs of the banners, t-shirts, garbage bins and salaries of the beach-cleaning team. I involved my neighbourhood association in the project. They were happy to have somebody motivating the group to take action.
We have organised the people of the neighbourhood and the kids of the Kungfu club three times to clean up the beach and the streets. We started our first gathering with a PowerPoint presentation showing how the beach looks full of garbage and how it could be when we keep it clean. We finished each clean-up morning with a breakfast for all the participants.
I am so happy that I found another way to share my love of photography in this incredible Chennai.
Together with my neighbourhood, we have inspired people to keep our environment clean. There is still a long way to go. People say I am only changing a drop in the ocean, but isn’t the ocean a multitude of drops? So I keep going.
“Operation Ice Cream”
The concept:
Operation Ice Cream has become a big success and was created based on the fact that especially during the weekend there are ice cream sellers who produce a lot of garbage through the ice cream wraps which are found back on the beach after the ice cream consumption. I saw a problem with this. The environmental student team of the American International School of Chennai (AISC) organised with Namma Beach, Namma Chennai and the Christian Advent School 2 more Operation Ice Cream clean ups.
There was an agreement made with the ice cream sellers to explain to their clients that the wrappers needed to be returned to the designated garbage bins and the students of the two school participating in the beach clean-up received an ice cream, sponsored by the project, for every full bag of garbage they collected. The Chennai Cooperation came to collect the huge pile of garbage at the end of the activity and the local police supported the morning clean up. Again it proved to be a wonderful event bringing together local schools, an international school, fishermen village kids, local vendors, police officers, beach visitors and Chennai Cooperation.
Supporting a local school
Through out my clean up project, several local schools were participating in the clean ups as well as the sensitisation of the people about the environment. One of these schools in particular was especially interested: “The Christian Advent School – Injambakkam”. So far, students from AISC, in cooperation with Namma Beach, Namma Chennai have done a workshop with the girls of the school about the importance of hygiene and their bodies. They learned how to make sanitary napkins and continued with an awareness program created by the AISC students.
Apart from this, Namma Beac
h, Namma Chennai has helped the school further by providing reparations, new toilets, a hand wash area and much more is to come. The classrooms were repainted and together with the children a workshop was done about painting their favourite word. There are a lot more plans in store for this school!
Reading / Learning
Namma Beach, Namma Chennai takes on many volunteers, young and old, who have a passion for teaching underprivileged children at local schools. NBNB has established a teaching program and reading sessions in the Advent Christian school of Injambakkam.
These teaching programs focus on English but range into many different directions including hygiene, the menstrual cycle, gender equality, educational painting. Next to this we are extremely open to new ideas and have a lot of students come in with personal projects.
In relation to the reading, we have converted an unused classroom into a library at the Advent Christian Elementary School in Injambakkam that has daily volunteers come in to read and do games with the students. We have also build an extra classroom in the high school section. This room is used as library and computer room for the High School students. We have volunteers coming in weekly to teach English to the 6th graders, and work with some teachers to improve their English language skills. Some American School students have also worked on computer skills with the local students. We are extremely proud of our team of volunteers and are happy to see how many new people join in to help these kids grow.
Friends of ECR Beach
Namma Beach, Namma Chennai wants to bring expats and locals together with the purpose of creating a greener, cleaner and healthier future for everyone living near the ECR beaches of Chennai. With this aim in mind we stared a group called ‘FRIENDS OF ECR BEACH’
The ‘Friends of ECR Beach’ is a group of people (individuals, groups of friends or neighbourhood associations) who live near the beach and adopt a part of the beach because they want to enjoy a clean beach every time they go there to run, walk, play with their kids or just enjoy the sunrise. With this is meant that you take the responsibility of keeping a specified area of the beach clean, asking locals to help and working alongside the Chennai Cooperation. Next to this we hope to have our ‘friends’ set up their own beach clean ups and raise awareness around the importance of keeping the environment clean.
Feel free to contact us and become a part of our “Friends of ECR Beach” group. We would love to get to know you better and make you a part of our Namma Beach, Namma Chennai community.
Hero of the Day
Often we come into contact with people who seem to display great environmental efforts and have a charismatic way of life. Through the ‘Hero of the Day’, Virginie Vlaminck and her community of NBNC dedicate a Facebook post to their hero of each day.
This hero can be anyone, at any time that sets forth a great example for others while exhibiting the characteristics and goals Namma Beach, Namma Chennai stands for. We proudly share this chosen individual with all our followers in the aim of showing others what positive behaviour looks like and that you don’t need to have it all to be our Hero.