plastic pollution street vendors single use plastic capacity building

Capacity Building is an essential component to enable various stakeholders to research, comprehend, plan and execute a study or project. Plastic being a comparatively newer and lesser explored topic in the development sector demands dire need of handholding at various stages. 

Parisar is involved in direct and indirect capacity building of street vendors in 5 cities of India namely Kolkata, Nagpur, Delhi, Udaipur and Jamshedpur. This mainly includes training workshops, handholding and support in understanding the concept of ‘Single Use Plastic’, its composition, hazardous effect of plastic, especially single use plastic on health and environment. It further empowers the street vendors about information on the single use plastic ban imposed across India since July 1st, 2022.

Capacity building on reuse systems and hands-on workshop on inclusive street design at a national level meeting in Arunachal Pradesh

National level meeting with the street vendors and their leaders was conducted from February 15 to 18, 2025 in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh. A total of 80 participants attended the event, engaging in discussions and activities focused on the issue of single-use plastic (SUP) and its detrimental impact on both the environment and livelihoods.

The daylong session began with an interactive icebreaker activity designed to gauge the participants' knowledge about the types of single-use plastics and their broader implications. This served as a refresher from the September 2024 National meeting, reinforcing previous discussions on the importance of reducing plastic waste.

Knowledge sharing on SUPs, reuse systems and inclusive street design strategies at national level meetings for street vendors

Over the past few months, Parisar was involved in capacity building of street vendors through national leadership meetings. 

The national leadership meeting held in July at Kolkata saw 50 participants, where the current national leaders were informed in detail about the reuse system. They showed their interest through queries with an aim to plan and implement the same in their cities. The on-ground work done by project fellows across the cities under the project were also reviewed. They presented their field interaction experiences, challenges and further work plan to make progress.

Session on Hazards of Single Use Plastic and Single Use Plastic Ban at Goa

Session on Hazards of Single Use Plastic and Single Use Plastic Ban at Goa: ongoing sessions

A comprehensive 4-day national meeting was organized by National Hawker’s Federation (NHF) from 1st August – 4th August at Goa. Various NHF state leaders and representatives attended the event. Parisar conducted sessions on the first day, 1st August, 2023 on Single Use Plastic, Urban Mobility and Social Media.

Following are key insights from the meeting:

Orientation Workshop on Single Use Plastic at Kolkata

Group photo from Orientation Workshop on Single Use Plastic at Kolkata

An interactive and activity-based capacity building workshop for street vendors on single use plastic was conducted on 3rd and 4th February, 2023 at Kolkata, West Bengal. Various street vendors and union leaders alongwith NHF General Secretary Shaktiman Ghosh and 15 other members attended this workshop.