In April 2019, ten young leaders in Nangarhar have decided to clean up the Jalalabad footbridges and promote the culture of using the bridges in the city for the first time ever through their community project.
Young leaders made a start by sitting with the citizens to find out why they were not using the footbridges. For instance, they arranged a group discussion with students of the schools located near the footbridges. “We do not use those bridges due to dirtiness and if they are not clean, it is impossible to benefit from them”, said one of the students.
“Because each young person has the ability to contribute to the community and together, young people can even influence more through collaboration and a commitment to bring about positive change, we engage” said one of the young leaders.
The Nangarhari young leaders started to raise awareness about how each citizen could participate in this initiative of using the footbridges. “We talked with street vendors who sell fresh vegetables and fruit to keep the surrounding of the bridges clean.” said one of the young leaders.
We also mobilized the school students to join the young leaders’ initiative and take active part in cleaning the footbridges across the city with the support of the Jalalabad municipality said another.
“Together with the young leaders, the students and municipality workers also worked to clean the footbridges. “ What gave us most energy was the voluntary participation of the local people. Till the end, they continuously worked together with us to clean the four footbridges of the city completely,” said one of the young leaders.
A lot of people were encouraged by the actions that were initiated by the young leaders. “When I saw the young leaders’ enthusiasm to clean the bridges, it inspired me to take part as well” said one of the volunteers in the program.”
“I didn’t think that we could do achieve such a result in a very short time. A result that would leave such a big impact in the community”, said another volunteer.
Young leaders also convinced the mayor to arrange and repair the lights on the air bridges, so that people now can walk easily without any problem during night time in city.
“After the implementation of our project I felt so happy and excited about how people of our community motivated me. I am committed now to do more for our community in future”, said one of the young leaders.