Arun Krishnamurthy, (31) is the founder of Environmentalist Foundation of India (EFI), a wildlife conservation and habitat restoration NGO working across eight cities in the country. It is working on 39 lakes and has restored five in the country. On World Environment Day he came up with five missions to get people’s attention towards the waterbodies in Coimbatore.

In a free-wheeling talk with The Covai Post, Arun, who worked with Google before quitting to take up this voluntary work, says he plans to get people’s support and engage more volunteers.

“Now we need Coimbatore support. We looking for more volunteers to come forward” said Arun, who was chosen as among the five people for prestigious Rolex awards for enterprise award in 2012 for scientific lake restoration in Chennai.

“Let’s talk lake is used to create awareness among public. A bunch of people has taken to sensitising people about the present condition of lakes. People who are interested can register with us. We have lake walks, a stroll around the bunds. This will help them to know about the waterbodies in Coimbatore. Click our lakes, where photos can be taken. That picture will be used for our awareness campaign.

“We are going to put live streaming on Facebook and such social media platforms. This should, I hope, attract more youngsters. We will try to identify young talents across school and colleges in Coimbatore to clean and conserve the environment. We also going to do some street plays which is a traditional way to attract people’s attention.”

The team did conduct voluntary lake cleanup on June 3 and 4 at Kumaraswamy Kulam also known as Muthannan Kulam process at Chokkampudhur.