River Vaigai is an eyesore today. Scant rainfall, garbage and relentless pollution over the years has turned the river into a dumping yard. Why is the river so brutally abused?

“Only the community that uses and needs the river can honour and protect it,” says Felicia Young, the Founder and Executive Director of “Earth Celebrations”, a non-profit organisation in New York. “People have to come together to ensure that the negative actions that pollute and exploit the river for the gain of a few are kept in check,” she asserts.

But the Vaigai has the potential of becoming a grand waterway again, says Felicia. The native third generation New Yorker who is also a community cultural development artist and theatrical pageant director is working on Vaigai River Restoration Pageant (VRRP) with local stakeholders and aims to stop further ruin of the river.

In the last 20 years, Felicia has, through advocacy projects and theatrical pageants, effected preservation of the community gardens in New York city, addressed climate change and restored the species and habitats of the once polluted Hudson river.

Madurai’s Chithirai festival is the source of inspiration for Felicia, she says. During a visit to the Temple town in 1989, she witnessed the famous celestial wedding of Goddess Meenakshi. So inspired was she by the festival pageant that she decided to use music, painting, sculpture, puppetry, dance, poetry, performance and ceremony that she saw being used in Madurai, as a means of getting communities back home to work together. She worked with the arts in New York from 1991 to 2005. “I engaged people from diverse communities to work together creatively for a common goal,” she says.

According to Felicia, it worked as a catalyst to mobilise the community at grassroots level, won support of elected officials, media and philanthropists and resulted in saving hundreds of community gardens in the city.

The positive change motivated her to create her next project, the Hudson River Pageant from 2009 to 2012 to highlight the restoration of the species and habitats of the Hudson River Estuary in New York City. This time round she engaged the community for educational and recreational activities such as oyster planting to organically cleanse the river, rowing and kayaking as new recreational uses of the river, wetlands planting to mitigate flood damage, river clean-ups to clear away garbage, recycling ceremonies, promoting waste solutions and fish release programmes.

Felicia is confident that the educative and innovative VRRP will get people to initiate positive change.