“In the past, we would pack the trash in a big bag and threw it into the lake at night. When the flood would come, all of the trash would come back out with the water,” she said laughing.

We asked her then, “Did any of the elders (your parents, the governor of the quarter, etc.) say anything about it?" 

She answered, “at that time, all people in the village did like that. We didn’t really care as other people did the same thing that I did.”

But this is slowly changing. Now, she is using the basket made with palm raffia for the dry waste and the plastic bucket for the wet waste after we delivered the basket and bucket to them. And the car from municipal collects the trash.  

We made some good changes in their waste managing system. In this way we could get good results from a  community engagement project. It was good not only for the local people but also showed the ways in which a university can play a civic role in a community. We can create some good changes in the community through actively engaging with the community rather than doing arm chair study about a community through literature.