A group of about 100 high school students from Vadodara, identifying themselves as the 'Children's Empowerment Forum (CEF)' have given out 15 statues of noted personalities across the city in "adoption", signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with 15 private and government agencies in order to ensure regular upkeep. The group had launched a campaign a few weeks ago for the maintenance of statues of public figures from history located across the city and identified 25 such statues for maintenance for one year by willing agencies, earning the support of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC). Titled 'Viral Vibhuti Pramita Dattak Yojana' (Glorious Personality Statue Adoption Project), a brainchild of Vedant Thaker, a 17-year-old spearheading CEF, the project has put up for grabs 25 statues of public figures such as Narsi Mehta, Kavi Narmad, Ravibhai Desai, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and others for "adoption" in Vadodara. Thaker said that a group of 100 volunteers of CEF - from various schools in Vadodara - spend days trying to identify "adoptable statues" and then approaching private companies and government agencies to adopt the statues in their vicinity to ensure that they were well maintained round the year. Thaker said, "There are several statues in the city but we were able to list 25 in the first round as those that were easily adoptable because they are accessible. Of these, we have managed to give out 15 for the annual maintenance as part of 'goodwill' to willing entities. We have signed a formal MoU with the parties and handed over the same to the VMC on Saturday." On Saturday, Vadodara Mayor Keyur Rokadia and VMC Standing Committee Chairman Hitendra Patel held a felicitation ceremony for the organisations that have come forward to adopt the statues and encouraged the children to continue their 'good work'. Thaker said, "In one year, the organisations that have adopted the statue will ensure that they are regularly cleaned, at least once a week as against the exercise of cleaning them once a year on a coinciding anniversary, undertaken by the administration."
