KOLLAM: Team Kerala, the state’s youth volunteer force, trained mainly for various disaster management tasks is donning yet another role at the school arts festival. The youths, mostly in their early 20s, have been assigned the task of assisting the organisers in ensuring strict adherence to green protocol.
The services of the volunteer force were not requisitioned earlier by the festival organisers. However, a day ahead of the fete, Team Kerala Kollam district captain Sajan S Kumar got a call from the organisers asking for their services at the arts festival venues.
Though at short notice, over 50 volunteers assembled at the main venue on Thursday. They were quickly given tasks and deployed at various venues. “As most of them are college-going students, we expect more than half of our 329-member volunteer force in the district to join by the weekend,” Sajan said.
The youths have been told to function as the eyes of the Haritha Karma Sena in ensuring plastic-free festival venues. “After we spot people littering plastic and other waste material at the venue, we gently inform them of the green protocol in place,” said Nandhu S Unni, a volunteer deployed at the sprawling Asramam grounds, the main venue.
Being a spirited volunteer force, Team Kerala members were seen happily collecting and properly dispensing plastic waste at the venue though their mandate was limited to alerting the Haritha Karma Sena staff.
Trained by the police, Fire and Rescue Services, excise, health and forest departments, the volunteers are ready to step in, in case of emergencies. They have also been told to keep a close watch on the crowd and administer first aid and other emergency measures in such scenarios.
Team Kerala, formerly known as Voluntary Youth Action Force, was formed under the aegis of the Kerala State Youth Welfare Board in the wake of the 2018 deluge.