In a few weeks from now, the half-a-kilometre long exit walls of the Coimbatore International Airport will sport a nice look, thanks to the efforts of the city-based NGO, My City Clean City (MC3).

MC3 was founded in June last year. The members first identify the walls in public areas that need to be worked on. They clean the walls of posters and stickers, whitewash them, and start painting socially-relevant pictures on them.

Initially, MC3 worked on walls opposite to KG Theatre, VoC Park, and Kuniamuthur. After obtaining the necessary permission from the Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC), MC3 has joined hands with CCMC and they have completed 18 projects of similar nature in locations like Brooke Bond Road, Women’s Polytechnic College, Seva Nilayam Children’s Home (RS Puram), and Good Shed Road. They have painted the walls with social message like stop child labour and sexual harassment, plant trees, and rain water harvesting.

“I drew inspiration from Bengaluru’s Ugly Indians NGO. This group chooses walls in Bengaluru city, clean them up and paint them with maroon and white colours. The members of the NGO remain anonymous. I came across a few like-minded people on Facebook and thus MC3 was founded. Today we have over 180 active volunteers. When we make an announcement on Facebook about cleaning the walls in a particular area in Coimbatore city, we find a lot of volunteers ready to help us,” Kishore C., founder of MC3, said.

While the group continues to give the ugly walls of our city a nice look, they also have plans to work on changing the way garbage is collected and disposed in Ward #12. This ward, under the West Zone of CCMC, has 62 streets. MC3 along with CCMC and volunteers plan to educate the residents of this ward on garbage segregation and disposal. They also have plans to work on how the garbage collected from this ward is managed.

MC3 can be contacted at 99433-55605.