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Just within a month of its announcement, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has launched its Participate Mumbai digital portal, where citizens, corporations, and NGOs can offer their time, expertise, or funds to BMC-led social initiatives in areas like education, cleanliness, conservation, health, women empowerment, and support for vulnerable groups.

The BMC has set up a dedicated Participate Mumbai Cell for the legal scrutiny, monitoring, grievance redressal, and impact assessment of the platform. mid-day first reported on this initiative in February.

What is Participate Mumbai?

>> This single-window platform brings together all the BMC departments, corporations, philanthropic institutions, and citizens as volunteers to contribute to meaningful, need-based civic initiatives.
The platform offers citizens, NGOs, and corporates the option to participate in two ways:
>> Donate funds for CSR initiatives
>> Volunteer for work with the civic body
*It can be accessed at: https://participatemumbai.mcgm.gov.in/volunteer

How you can volunteer

Citizens can register on the portal and volunteer for a number of activities such as:
>> Beach clean-ups
>> Tree plantation drives
>> Organising health camps
>> Participating in education programmes such as organising singing or dancing lessons for BMC school children, soft skill programmes, etc
>> Citizens can also suggest their own ideas

Mumbaikars’ views

The move has been welcomed by citizens as a chance to engage with the civic body on positive collaborative notes. Over the past three decades, Mumbai`s civic issues and their solutions have been shaped by active participation from citizen groups. Participation in civic issues dates back to the 1990s in Mumbai and has also been formalised by BMC in the form of the advanced locality management (ALM) programme — a partnership between BMC and citizens to improve local amenities. Issues raised by ALMs include preserving open spaces, improving sanitation facilities, and improving the walkability of the roads in their vicinity, among others. According to estimates from the BMC, R2000 crore to R3000 crore of CSR funds are available or accessible in Mumbai, which can be tapped by the civic body through this initiative, and streamlined purely on a volunteer basis.

Citizen Speak

Vidya Vaidya, a Bandra resident and member of her area’s ALM since the 1990s
‘It will be a refreshing change to engage with the civic body for initiatives that have positive impacts. Many years ago, our local garden department invited us to plant trees at the beginning of the monsoon season. I still remember the joy and peace that activity gave me! Bandra residents are vocal about civic issues. We constantly ask for better roads and footpaths, and the preservation of open spaces. But the negativity of the interaction weighs down on you at the end of the day, because we have to keep criticising and fighting. I would be delighted to participate in work that has a positive impact’

Naina Kathpalia, veteran Mumbai-based social activist
‘I’m wary of the BMC’s new initiatives because, in my experience, they have all been short-lived. This is a good idea, but I’m uncertain if it will be sustained or what kind of responses the BMC will get. I’ve seen several such BMC initiatives take off, but also fizzle out for multiple reasons’

Rs 2000 cr
Minimum amount of CSR funds available to BMC