These CGP's were held in the summers of '94,'95 and '96. After CGP '96, some of us participants felt the need for a forum to support such activities throughout the year and we decided to set up an organisation that could plan, coordinate and implement various programs related to the urban environment. With this objective in mind, CYWEN was formed by a group of 15 on the 5th of June, 1996 (World Environment Day). Since then around two hundred 15 to 23 year olds have come and moved on, with CYWEN's average strength at any given time hovering around 30. CYWEN was also instrumental in organising two more Clean Green Projects, which now act as feeder and training programs for new CYWEN members.
CYWEN has been involved in projects related to energy conservation, solid waste management and plantations. Throughout, it has been CYWEN's endeavor to create environmental awareness amongst the community. Over the years, our target groups have shifted to focus more on youth as a means to reach out to the entire community and to mobilize the existing resources to set up decentralized urban environment management systems. We have laid special emphasis on developing various media as tools for our outreach program. Research has also been a major focus area with us, and we have conducted numerous surveys to ascertain awareness levels in various groups within the community.
More recently, we have been linking up with the local media, so as to draw public attention to some common environment problems. We act as information providers to journalists who wish to do pieces on environment issues. We also seek to draw the media's attention to such issues that they would have otherwise missed.
In the future, we would like to expand our extent and impact of our reach, acting both as information collectors and disseminators.
