By Chris Elliott…….
Wherever we may be living, the issue of rubbish and environmental damage causes great concern for many people and is the source of complaints and demands for action from the authorities and no more so than in Northern Cyprus.
From time to time there comes an individual who arrives and makes a real difference and that is Diana Suyunshalina who contacted me in late September to tell me the following.
“Hello Chris, my name is Diana. We are a cleaning group, and we want more volunteers and we want on a regular basis to clean all over Kyrenia.
We already cleaned around Camelot Beach, and on the 02.10.2018 we start cleaning around Lambousa tombs. Our mayor Fırat Ataser also will join us. And the Belediye will provide with a car and plastic bags. It would be a great help to attract more volunteers with your help.
We made posts on Facebook, and already a lot of people want to join us. We have ideas how to make the whole North Cyprus clean with little efforts. Could you also join us that day, even for 10-20min. Looking forward to hearing from you.”
Naturally we wished to help a cause like cleaning North Cyprus and started publishing articles and shared across Facebook and other social media with the result that more people were wanting to do the same and formed their own groups and in conjunction with local Mayors starting to clean up their villages.
We brought a number of these group leaders together through the Facebook page Temiz Kibris/A Clean Cyprus so they could share their individual news and this then mushroomed through many other social media pages which resulted with more people liking and following the news of the cleanup groups.
In recognition of this Margaret Sheard and I say thank you to Diana Suyunshalina for her drive and enthusiasm which has resulted in so many people coming together to help each other make a difference in cleaning up our lovely island and long may it continue.
