Naksha Report – Grades 8-10

Project Mumbai is an award-winning not-for-profit organisation of public-private-people partnership.

Their work encompasses Environment, Governance, Healthcare (Mental Health), Mobility, and Education. They work closely and directly with citizens, engaging and partnering with governments and policymakers and collaborating with like-minded private and social sector leaders. Their goal is to work towards growth and development of the city and to rebuild Mumbai to make it a better place to live, work and play, with citizens volunteering to do their bit for the community. Project Mumbai is playing the role of a catalyst—ensuring social transformation through citizen initiatives. ‘You make a living by what you get. You make a life by what you give.’ Their tagline ‘Mumbai Ke Liye Kuchh bhi Karega’ is a subtle call to action urging citizens to take ownership of the city through participation and work towards make Mumbai the Kindness Capital of India.

Project Naksha, an initiative by Project Mumbai, is a collaborative plan which aims to map every road and lane of our city, along with it’s history being recorded. The project aims to help citizens to navigate the vast city of Mumbai while learning about those honoured on the names of every street, road and gully. Details regarding areas of importance such as location and number of police stations, hospitals and educational institutions are provided on the map, ensuring an easier way of navigation for citizens. The additional interesting aspect of Project Naksha is that every time a person clicks on the road sign and name, they will get to see which police station jurisdiction this road comes under, which will be a huge enabler for citizens when they have to report an incident.

Students were first briefed through a PowerPoint Presentation by Project Mumbai, regarding the aims of Naksha and it’s benefits to improve the city and the overall well-being of society. Besides providing us with a medium to explore the history and features behind the several roads of Mumbai, it widened our horizons in terms of exploring Mumbai and exposed us to parts of Mumbai we had never seen before.

In the Naksha initiative, we are first allotted a road to map. This includes identifying every chowk and sourcing the history of both the person of prominence who is featured on the signboard and the historical significance of the road itself. Additionally, we filled out a “Point of Interests” form to provide details of facilities of civic and navigational importance, including but not limited to police station locations, residential buildings, shops, banks and ATMS, hospitals, educational institutions etc, on the map. While adding Points of Interest relating to a particular street, all locations were also geo-tagged by us so that every citizen can not only access this information from the location but also the points of interest at the click of a button. The next step (to be done by Project Mumbai) is to QR code the sign boards which would enable the citizens to track the locations with ease digitally.

This Naksha Project helped the students learn several things. It taught us the power of collaboration and participation in identifying challenges which people face every day and finding solutions which incorporate both the Public and Private entities to make things work seamlessly.