New Delhi, July 21, 2020: Iconic paint manufacturer – Shalimar Paints – in association with Raah Foundation for Enlightening Lives launched “Project Suraksha”, a unique campaign aimed at spreading awareness about COVID-19 and its preventive measures across slum areas, in the form of community wall paintings. The campaign kickstarted at Dallupura, New Delhi, by volunteer painters. This initiative will take place in other locations in Delhi NCR over the next few weeks.
The volunteer artists created numerous wall paintings near slums in Dallupuraat. Some of the prominent locations were schools, communities, central board office, police station, etc. These wall paintings displayed messages of how to prevent oneself from the virus, the dos and don’ts, the importance of social distancing, wearing masks, and so on. These messages were in the form of graphics and in colloquial languages which are easy to interpret by all socio-economic groups. Besides the murals, the initiative also plans to add numbers of various helplines on the walls which the residents can use in case of emergencies and if they require the assistance of government officials.
Raah Foundation for Enlightening Lives is already working with informal workers in the urban settlements in Delhi. This initiative has been introduced to provide an opportunity for the painters from the community to come forward and help them generate income by painting the walls.
Raah Foundation for Enlightening Lives is a not-for-profit organisation established in 2017 to ensure gender inclusiveness, creating an equitable society, with special focus on engaging men as key components to ensure women empowerment. The Foundation has been working extensively towards community welfare and development and has framed its programmes in accordance to the needs of the community, following the principles of Education, Entrepreneurship, Environment, Economic Empowerment and Equality.
According to Meenu Sharma, Co-founder of Raah Foundation for enlightening lives, “The rhetoric amidst COVID-19 of slum dwellers is excruciating. Substandard housing, packed settlement, common toilets, etc., makes social distancing a far-fetched dream. The rapid spread of this novel coronavirus has made practices like hand washing, wearing a mask and physical distancing an integral part of daily life. Hence, we initiated Project Suraksha with Shalimar Paints with an aim to spread awareness by painting messages on the slum walls to contain the spread of this lethal virus. A picture paints a thousand words and will act as a daily reminder to every passer-by. Simply put, we see it as ane interesting way to make the walls speak and create awareness.”
Dwelling on the initiative, Minal Srivastava, Vice President – Marketing, Shalimar Paints, said, “With the help of this initiative, we just want to help create constant reminders on ways to combat this virus and pandemic. While the fear around this is very real but at times, it also creates unnecessary panic and we lose focus on what we should be working towards. I hope these reminders help in reinforcing a few simple things that are within our control in the fight against this disease. The category that we work in fortunately has the capability to help in this – so we are trying to contribute in whatever way we can.”