Reimagining Mumbai: The People-Powered Change Led by Project Mumbai (VIDEO)

A journalist for over 25 years, Shishir Joshi moved away from the hustle and bustle of the newsroom to make Mumbai, a city that is his home, a better place to live. His mission to find solutions for an array of problems that plague India’s financial capital led to the establishment of Project Mumbai in 2018.

Amol Gupte, filmmaker, actor and painter

“Mumbai is a dynamic, but challenging city—there are challenges of travel, environment, hygiene, inclusivity and more. But people are always wondering what they can do and how to be part of the solution. And we at Project Mumbai felt we can be a catalyst of that change,” explains Shishir Joshi, co-founder and chief executive of Project Mumbai. 

As a model of public-private-people partnership, the organisation works bottoms up with citizens, we work top down with the government creating scale. They work with like-minded organisations, and together empower citizens to bring change. “So Project Mumbai was all about seeing the city become a better place to live, work, and play with citizens as champions and Project Mumbai as a catalyst,” shares the Andheri resident.

Clean water, mental health, volunteering, supplying nutritious meals, accessibility and inclusivity, sustainability, beach cleaning are a few of the many projects that they have been working on. “We are the country's largest plastic and e-waste recycling initiative, which is citizen-led, where behaviour change becomes our focus. The aim is that no waste should go to the landfill,” he shares. 

Mental health, which began receiving open discussion after the pandemic, has since become a major focus for the organisation. “It became a conversation and we felt that this is a conversation that we need to go deeper into. One community which is often ignored are the adolescents, so we focus on adolescent mental health a lot, along with other groups. We have possibly the largest adolescent mental health curriculum-based programme in municipal schools and a helpline which reaches out to them,” explains the 55-year-old. 

Mumbai may be the financial capital of the country, but most of this city is not accessible to people with disabilities. So Project Mumbai launched Samavesh, a programme on inclusivity and accessibility and adopted a wheelchair basketball team that became a showcase. “We are the knowledge partners to the BMC to make Mumbai an accessible city, we are creating awareness and also making ramps across the city. Through the wheelchair basketball initiative, we also aim to highlight that there are people with challenges who have overcome them — and encourage greater compassion,” he shares. 

Since its inception, over 1.7 crore lives have benefitted due to Project Mumbai’s work. Filmmaker, actor and painter Amol Gupte, who is impressed by Joshi’s work, shares, “While any city changes by itself and with passage of time experiences change, what Shishir and his team are doing is changing mindsets. They have inspired millions. There will always be a bunch of people who feel dejected or lose hope. Even among such groups, Shishir and Project Mumbai are injecting a sense of hope for a city which is filled with kindness. This is a story worth being told.”

Ashish Chauhan, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, The National Stock Exchange of India (NSE) talking about Project Mumbai's work, shares, "Project Mumbai has tapped so eloquently into the goodness that each Mumbaikar possesses. Effortlessly, they have built a hyper local model of volunteerism, which not just brings change across various areas but also inculcates within each one of us a sense of ownership towards our urban environment but a strong feeling of hope that together we can. Their tag line, Mumbai Ke Liye Kuchh Bhi Karega (Anything for Mumbai) or Kuchh Pal Apney Sheher Ke Liye (a bit of time for your city) can only lead them faster to their vision of making Mumbai the Kindness Capital of India, which even I believe in. Project Mumbai has impacted over 1.7 crore lives in six years--that's about 8 thousand plus lives every day. That in itself is evidence of their impact on Mumbai and Mumbaikars."