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• Delhi environmental NGO. We keep the record. / You cannot teach a river from a photograph. So we go — two hours into a landfill, a few days into a forest, most of a week in a village, twelve days from Yamunotri to Agra. A journey is the part of the argument that has

Now

• Every city /now/air/india 255 cities reported an air quality index at 05:00 IST, 13 September 2026 . 15 of them are above the limit India set for itself. This is all of them, read together in one hour, in the order they were read.
• Assam flood /now/climate-event/assam-landslide Not too much water. Too little room for it.
• Bihar flood /now/climate-event/bihar-flood Not too much water. Too little room for it.
• Nepal landslide /now/climate-event/nepal-glof The rain is the trigger. The slope is the disaster.
• Uttarakhand: cloudburst /now/climate-event/uttarakhand-landslide Uttarakhand — and the river it runs into. Positions are real coordinates; the extent of the event is not known.
• Now /now One card each, and the kind of limit each reading is held to.
• Delhi’s air /now/air Every figure here is measured against a limit India has not adopted.
• India’s extreme rain /now/climate-event 3,594 people in 2024, from five named causes in one official table. Four of the five rose.
• India’s forest fires /now/forest-fire 11 people are recorded as having died in a forest fire in India, in a period the country mapped 34,562 square kilometres of burnt forest. Both figures are official.
• India’s forest loss /now/forest-loss Three, in fact — and two of them are not independent, which matters more than the disagreement.
• India’s heat /now/heat 1,832 people in 2024. It was 804 the year before.
• Delhi’s Yamuna /now/yamuna Before the rest of this page asks for your attention: the Yamuna is not an exception. It is the one Delhi has to look at.

The record

• The record /record Every reading we publish stays where we published it, with its source, its date and the limit it was judged against.
• Delhi air record /record/air 268 hourly observations from 25 Aug 2026, each with the monitor that produced it.
• August 2026 /record/air/2026/08 7 days of readings from CPCB's Delhi network, 85 hourly observations in all. Every day carries the hours actually observed, so a partial day cannot be read as a complete one.
• September 2026 /record/air/2026/09 13 days of readings from CPCB's Delhi network, 183 hourly observations in all. Every day carries the hours actually observed, so a partial day cannot be read as a complete one.

Use the data

• Use the data /use-the-data Everything Swechha publishes as a reading is open. Quote it, republish it, build on it, argue with it.

Learn

• Learn /learn Every reading on this site is judged against a published limit. These pages are where the limits come from, who set them, how the measurement is made, and what it still cannot tell you.
• When apps disagree /learn/air-quality-apps-disagree Because AQI is not a physical quantity. It is a scale, and different publishers use different scales, different station sets, different averaging and different rules about which station represents the city. Two apps show
• Apparent temperature /learn/apparent-temperature Apparent temperature is what heat does to a body once humidity is taken into account, rather than what a thermometer reads in the shade. It matters because humans cool by evaporating sweat, and humid air stops that worki
• Climate normals /learn/climate-normal A climate normal is the average of a weather variable over a fixed multi-decade window, used as the reference that departures are measured against. The World Meteorological Organization's standard window is thirty years,
• The CPCB index /learn/cpcb-aqi It measures the concentration of up to eight pollutants at a monitoring station, converts each to a 0–500 sub-index using CPCB's published breakpoints, and reports the highest of them. It does not measure air quality as
• Delhi's air pollution /learn/delhi-air-pollution Three things at once. Delhi sits in a landlocked basin where winter air stops moving; it is ringed by a dense industrial, agricultural and vehicular region whose emissions arrive regardless of what the city itself does;
• Delhi's AQI /learn/delhi-aqi The Air Quality Index is a single number between 0 and 500 that converts several pollutant concentrations into one scale. It is not an average of them. CPCB calculates a sub-index for each pollutant and the AQI is the wo
• Delhi rainfall /learn/delhi-rainfall Delhi's rainfall is measured by IMD gauges, of which Safdarjung is the long-standing reference station for the city. Totals are reported against a seasonal normal — a long-period average, not a rule. The city has no lega
• Counting deaths /learn/environmental-deaths-india Through the National Crime Records Bureau, which publishes an annual table of accidental deaths attributed to forces of nature, cause by cause. It is the only national, annual, cause-by-cause official count India has. Ev
• Extreme rainfall /learn/extreme-rainfall India Meteorological Department classifies rainfall by what falls at a station in 24 hours. Heavy rain begins at 64.5 mm, very heavy at 115.6 mm, and extremely heavy at 204.5 mm. The categories describe a day , not a sto
• Faecal coliform /learn/faecal-coliform Faecal coliform is a count of bacteria that live in the gut of warm-blooded animals, reported as Most Probable Number per 100 millilitres of water. The bacteria counted are mostly harmless in themselves. They are measure
• Forest vs tree cover /learn/forest-cover-vs-tree-cover In India's official assessment, forest cover is all land over one hectare with tree canopy density above 10 per cent, whatever is growing there and whoever owns it — a plantation counts, an orchard can count. Tree cover
• Fire detections /learn/forest-fires-india The widely quoted Indian fire figures are counts of satellite detections : pixels that registered hot enough to flag. One fire can produce several detections on one satellite pass and none on the next, and a detection ca
• India's forest data /learn/forest-loss-india Both statements are true, and the reason is the definition. India's official assessment reports a net increase in forest cover, because forest cover counts canopy of any kind. The satellite series reports cumulative tree
• Groundwater /learn/groundwater-delhi Stage of groundwater extraction is how much of the water that refills an aquifer each year is taken back out of it each year, as a percentage. Under 70 per cent an area is classed Safe; above 100 per cent the aquifer is
• Heat vs heatwave /learn/heatwave-vs-extreme-heat A heatwave is a declared event under IMD's criteria. Extreme heat is a condition — dangerous heat exposure, whether or not any threshold was crossed. The two come apart constantly: humid coastal heat that never reaches 4
• Reading data /learn/how-to-read-environmental-data Most misleading environmental claims are built from accurate numbers. The failure is almost never fabrication — it is a figure quoted without the thing it was measured against, over a period it did not cover, or from a m
• IMD criteria /learn/imd-heatwave-criteria A station qualifies if its maximum temperature reaches the floor for its zone — 40°C in the plains, 37°C on the coast, 30°C in the hills — and then either departs from its own normal by 4.5°C or more, or reaches 45°C out
• Heatwaves /learn/india-heatwave In India a heatwave is a formally defined event, declared by the India Meteorological Department when the maximum temperature at a station clears a zone-dependent floor and departs far enough from that station's own norm
• Measured or modelled /learn/measured-vs-modelled A measured number came from an instrument pointed at the thing. A modelled number came from a calculation about the thing. Both can be right and both can be wrong, but they fail in different ways and they cannot be compa
• PM10 /learn/pm10 PM10 is airborne particulate matter with a diameter of 10 micrometres or less. It includes everything counted as PM2.5 and adds the coarse fraction between 2.5 and 10 µm — road dust, construction dust, soil, pollen, mate
• PM2.5 /learn/pm25 PM2.5 is airborne particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 micrometres or less — roughly a thirtieth the width of a human hair. It matters more than any other pollutant Delhi measures because particles that small are no
• Rivers ranked /learn/polluted-river-stretches Ranked by the worst BOD reading at any of its monitored stations, the Yamuna comes eighth of the 47 Indian rivers with enough stations to rank — behind the Sabarmati, the Sirsa, the Hindon and others. That placing is mis
• Reporting floors /learn/reporting-floor A reporting floor is the lowest value a measurement method will return. Below it the method cannot distinguish one quantity from another, so it reports the floor. A reading at the floor therefore means at or below that v
• Source apportionment /learn/source-apportionment Source apportionment is the exercise of deciding what share of measured pollution came from which source. It is modelled, never measured — no instrument can tell you that a particle came from a truck. Two government-comm
• Stubble burning /learn/stubble-burning After the paddy harvest in Punjab and Haryana, farmers have a matter of weeks to clear residue before sowing wheat, and burning is the fastest way to do it. Satellites count the fires. What they count is detections, not
• Tree-cover loss /learn/tree-cover-loss Tree-cover loss is the removal of tree canopy in a mapped pixel, detected from Landsat imagery. It counts canopy disappearing for any reason — logging, fire, disease, storm, or a plantation being harvested on schedule. I
• Warm nights /learn/warm-nights A body recovers from heat overnight. When the night does not cool, it does not recover, and consecutive hot nights compound into the physiological state that kills people. Across the fourteen stations this site reads ove
• BOD /learn/yamuna-bod Biochemical oxygen demand is the amount of oxygen that micro-organisms will consume while breaking down the organic matter in a water sample, measured over five days at 20°C and reported in milligrams per litre. It is th
• Dissolved oxygen /learn/yamuna-dissolved-oxygen Dissolved oxygen is the amount of oxygen gas held in water, measured in milligrams per litre. Fish, invertebrates and the bacteria that break down waste all need it. India's bathing-water criterion is more than 5.0 mg/L.
• Yamuna pollution /learn/yamuna-pollution Because in Delhi the river is barely a river. Almost all its flow is taken out at Wazirabad for the city's drinking water, and what continues downstream is largely drain discharge. The stretch from Wazirabad to Okhla is

Teach

• Teach /teach Swechha's education programme, written out in full: the background a teacher needs on each theme, and the sessions that go with it. Use one, use all of them, change them for your own classroom.
• The A to Z /teach/a-to-z 334 environmental terms, defined plainly, as the compendium defines them.
• Before you start /teach/before-you-start Why this is taught the way it is taught — and how to run a session so it does something.
• Air pollution /teach/blowing-in-the-wind Air pollution and what it does to a body
• Air Particle Experiment (Air pollution) /teach/blowing-in-the-wind/air-particle-experiment The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• How do we get to school? (Air pollution) /teach/blowing-in-the-wind/how-do-we-get-to-school The way children travel to school can make a difference to their health and the environment. Some have to travel a long way; others may live close to the school.
• Not-So-Silly Cilia Game (Air pollution) /teach/blowing-in-the-wind/not-so-silly-cilia-game The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Climate justice /teach/climate-justice Climate justice and active citizenship
• Climate change, human rights and equality (Climate justice) /teach/climate-justice/climate-change-human-rights-and-equality The Sustainable Development Goals are seventeen goals the United Nations agreed in 2015, and they apply to every country, India included. Read them as a list of things every person should be able to count on: health, sch
• Climate game (Climate justice) /teach/climate-justice/climate-game Inequality is the heart of climate justice. This game puts it in the room. Everyone starts on one line, and by the end nobody is standing on it.
• The climate justice (Climate justice) /teach/climate-justice/the-climate-justice Climate change can be the same across a huge area — one rise in temperature, one rise in sea level. What it does to people is not the same at all. It runs into whatever a person already had: money, land, information, a s
• Who should take climate action? (Climate justice) /teach/climate-justice/who-should-take-climate-action The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Food on my plate /teach/food-on-my-plate Where food comes from
• Food Security Game (Food on my plate) /teach/food-on-my-plate/food-security-game The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• From farm to table (Food on my plate) /teach/food-on-my-plate/from-farm-to-table Students take one everyday food and follow it backwards — from the plate to the field, naming every person it passed through and every cost nobody printed on the packet. With a small group, do it with a single food. One
• Where Does Your Food Come From? (Food on my plate) /teach/food-on-my-plate/where-does-your-food-come-from The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Energy and the future /teach/future-and-energy Energy and the future
• Carbon Cycle Adventure Story Game (Energy and the future) /teach/future-and-energy/carbon-cycle-adventure-story-game The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Energy In Daily Life (Energy and the future) /teach/future-and-energy/energy-in-daily-life The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Energy Report Card (Energy and the future) /teach/future-and-energy/energy-report-card The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Light For Heat (Energy and the future) /teach/future-and-energy/light-for-heat The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Solar Purifier (Energy and the future) /teach/future-and-energy/solar-purifier The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Sustainable development /teach/sustainable-development Sustainable development
• Building Climate Resilience - SDG 13 (Climate Action) (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/building-climate-resilience-sdg-13-climate-actio The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Defining Sustainable, Holistic and Inclusive Development (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/defining-sustainable-holistic-and-inclusive-deve Pupils work out what development is for, and who gets left out of it, starting from their own list of what they cannot live without.
• Drain or Sustain (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/drain-or-sustain The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Issue Analysis: the Jigsaw (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/issue-analysis-the-jigsaw Pupils practise taking a local issue apart, in teams.
• Issue Analysis (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/issue-analysis Pupils practise taking a local issue apart.
• The Bean Game (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/the-bean-game The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• The Life Of A T-Shirt Activity (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/the-life-of-a-t-shirt-activity The clothing industry is the 3rd largest industry in the world, after cars and technology, and clothes are bought and thrown away faster than at any point in history — the United Kingdom, where this activity was written,
• The Story of Electronics (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/the-story-of-electronics The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• The Three Spheres in Your Own Community (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/the-three-spheres-in-your-own-community Pupils describe the three sides of sustainability as they show up in their own town. Most people hear the word and think only of the environment. This lesson makes the social and economic sides visible too.
• Truth, Falsehood and Citizenship (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/truth-falsehood-and-citizenship This lesson asks what truth and lies have to do with being a citizen, and whether a society that runs on lies can last. It puts values in front of pupils rather than facts.
• What Sustainability Means to You (Sustainable development) /teach/sustainable-development/what-sustainability-means-to-you Students set down what they already think sustainability means, meet the definition the world actually uses, and then test what it implies about meeting people's basic needs now and later.
• Trees and forests /teach/trees-and-forests Trees, forests and how they grow
• Exposure Walks (Trees and forests) /teach/trees-and-forests/exposure-walks The manual gives this session no step list. What it does give is below.
• How Trees Grow? (Trees and forests) /teach/trees-and-forests/how-trees-grow How does a hard little seed become a tree big enough to shade a whole courtyard? Most seeds never do. A forest makes enormous numbers of them and almost all are eaten, dried out, or land somewhere hopeless. The few that
• Sketching Trees (Trees and forests) /teach/trees-and-forests/sketching-trees Sketch the outline of every different tree shape you can find near the school, or on a field trip. Draw the whole tree, not the leaves. Get real variety: something broad, something narrow, something twisted, something th
• Understanding Tree Growth (Trees and forests) /teach/trees-and-forests/understanding-tree-growth The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Waste /teach/wasted Waste, and what happens to it
• Dung Power (Waste) /teach/wasted/dung-power The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Exposure Walks (Waste) /teach/wasted/exposure-walks The manual gives this session no step list. What it does give is below.
• My Waste (Waste) /teach/wasted/my-waste The manual gives this session no step list. What it does give is below.
• Reflecting Back on Learnings (Waste) /teach/wasted/reflecting-back-on-learnings The manual gives this session no step list. What it does give is below.
• What is waste? /Understanding Waste (Waste) /teach/wasted/what-is-waste-understanding-waste This session builds an understanding of waste: what it is, where it comes from, and what goes wrong when it is handled badly. It takes a historical view — what a household threw out two generations ago, and what it throw
• Water and rivers /teach/water-water-everywhere Water, and not a drop to drink
• Exposure Walks (Water and rivers) /teach/water-water-everywhere/exposure-walks A walk along a river is the shortest way to show students what a city does to its water. Trace the river through the built-up stretch, find the points where the pollution goes in, and look at who lives with the result. T
• Gray, Green, Blue: Water Security (Water and rivers) /teach/water-water-everywhere/gray-green-blue-water-security What it takes to keep water running in a growing city, and who does that work — read off a set of photographs.
• My Water Footprint (Water and rivers) /teach/water-water-everywhere/my-water-footprint Introduces two ideas: your water footprint, and the water hidden inside everything you buy.
• Saving Water At Home (Water and rivers) /teach/water-water-everywhere/saving-water-at-home The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Saving Water on Campus (Water and rivers) /teach/water-water-everywhere/saving-water-on-campus The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• The Ocean and Plastic Pollution (Water and rivers) /teach/water-water-everywhere/the-ocean-and-plastic-pollution The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.
• Vision for water (Water and rivers) /teach/water-water-everywhere/vision-for-water Students pick two of the questions below and argue them out, in pairs or in small groups, using what they already know about water.
• Water cycle in a bag! (Water and rivers) /teach/water-water-everywhere/water-cycle-in-a-bag The whole water cycle, in a plastic bag taped to a sunny window. Students watch evaporation and condensation happen over a single day.

The Journal

• The Journal /journal Analysis and reporting on India’s environment. Every figure carries the date it was observed.
• Delhi’s air is not one number /journal/delhi-is-not-one-city On the evening of 8 September, one Delhi monitor read 35 and another read 211. Both were CPCB stations, both were reporting normally, and both were describing the same city at the same hour.
• India’s forest arithmetic /journal/one-state-lost-twice-the-national-gain India's own forest report records a net increase of 156.41 km² between 2021 and 2023. Madhya Pradesh alone lost 371.54 km². Both figures are in the same table, and the second is the one that does not survive being averag

Work

• Campaigns /work/campaigns Public pressure with a name on it, since We for Yamuna in 2000.
• Monsoon Wooding /work/campaigns/monsoon-wooding The verb is ours and it is the whole campaign: planted and survived.
• No Plastic /work/campaigns/no-plastic Two words, and no ambiguity about what is being asked. What the campaign left behind is the argument itself: ten A3 sheets on single-use plastic, marine litter, microplastics and who is responsible for a thing after it i
• Events /work/events Workshops, concerts and plays. One night at a time.
• The work /work Everything Swechha runs, in one place. Projects, campaigns, journeys and events.
• Journeys — school camps and walks /work/journeys A thousand kilometres on one river, or five days in a village.
• CityScapes /work/journeys/cityscapes The eco-walks, renamed. A river bank, a landfill, a ridge forest, a heritage water system — all of it already inside Delhi, all of it reachable before lunch.
• Gram Anubhav /work/journeys/gram-anubhav Purely experiential, which here means you are not shown a village. You stay in one, eat in one, and do a day's work in one.
• NatureScapes /work/journeys/naturescapes Six destinations, four ecosystems, one school group at a time. None of the six explains itself from a classroom, which is the only reason to take a bus that far.
• Yamuna Yatra /work/journeys/yamuna-yatra From where it originates and is pristine, down to the point where it reaches Agra and is almost a toxic body of water. Twelve days.
• Projects /work/projects Curriculum, campus and garden. The work that runs for years.
• Bridge the Gap /work/projects/bridge-the-gap Between a hundred and a hundred and fifty Delhi schools every year. Land, water, air, waste, climate change — and who gets left out of all five.
• Eco Action /work/projects/eco-action One public park in Vasant Kunj went from five per cent green cover to ninety, over a decade. That is the whole argument for this project.
• Farm School /work/projects/farm-school An organic, experiential, deconstructed un'education Learning Lab. In practice: five acres, an hour and a half from Delhi, and a farm that has to actually produce or the lesson is wrong.
• Influence /work/projects/influence Ten fellows a year, each one running at a problem in their own neighbourhood. Climate, air, environment, waste. Pick one, then build something.
• ME to WE /work/projects/me-to-we It started in 2007 as a volunteer school on the banks of the Yamuna. Some of the children who came to it are now core team members here.

Stories and films

• Stories and films /stories Films made with the people in them, and a poster series that said the same things on paper — in a city that reads walls before it reads reports.
• Climate crisis in the UK and Europe /stories/climate-crisis-uk-and-europe By Richa Mirdha
• Cyclone Biparjoy /stories/cyclone-biparjoy By Antarixa Bhardwaj
• Increasing climate migration due to Assam floods /stories/increasing-climate-migration-assam-floods By Tanya Mittal
• Rise above the waters /stories/rise-above-the-waters By Antarixa Bhardwaj
• High time young people accelerate climate action /stories/young-people-accelerate-climate-action By Tanya Mittal

Healthy Cities

• Bridge the Gap — Healthy Cities /healthy-cities What a city’s air, water, waste and food do to the health of the people in it — taught for a year in twenty-six Delhi-NCR schools, and piloted by ten funded fellows.
• Anjali Choudhary — composting in Bharuch /healthy-cities/fellows/anjali-choudhary Six hundred and seventy-seven people in Bharuch found out where their wet waste goes. Discarded chemical tanks became bulk composters, and one site now takes 180 to 200 kilos a day that used to leave for the landfill.
• Mansi Thakar Jani — Gujarat water heritage /healthy-cities/fellows/mansi-thakar-jani Gujarat built stepwells and lakes to hold water through the dry months. Munsar Lake had been ignored for years. Four events later there are volunteers trained as Stepwell Guardians who check on the sites when nobody is w
• Palak Bajpai — Miyawaki forests /healthy-cities/fellows/miyawaki-forests Four dense little forests inside school and college gates: 1,025 plants across 2,120 square feet, put in on four dated days in 2026. Another 435 saplings are still held back for the next site.
• S Vineeth Kumar — Napier grass in Karnataka /healthy-cities/fellows/s-vineeth-kumar Five farmers, five acres, four harvests of Napier grass. Seasonal crops on that land return around forty-five thousand rupees an acre a year. This is the trial that asks whether biomass beats it. It started a year ahead
• Shubham Dipak Gurav — natural farming in Sangli /healthy-cities/fellows/shubham-dipak-gurav Four Natural Farming Schools in four Sangli villages. Jeevamrut, beejamrut, agniastra and neemastra made in the yard, in drums the farmers keep. A hundred and fifty people, six workshops, and a WhatsApp group that outlas
• Shubham Panwar — mushrooms in Uttarkashi /healthy-cities/fellows/shubham-panwar Forty women in two Uttarkashi villages, four hundred kilos of straw that would otherwise have been burnt, and seventy kilos of mushrooms out of the first cycle at Saini. Temperature and humidity tracked over WhatsApp.
• Swapnil Chaurasiya — waste segregation in Bilaspur /healthy-cities/fellows/swapnil-chaurasiya Almost every child in Bilaspur already thought segregation was a good idea. Doing it at home went from 24 per cent to 80. The nudge was the child, working on the parent.
• Taniya Gill — native plants in Delhi /healthy-cities/fellows/taniya-gill Thirty-five people, three workshops, ten native species and a journal each to keep. The smallest project in the cohort, and the only one that made room for Delhi’s queer community.
• Tanuz Kalita — riverbank saplings in Majuli /healthy-cities/fellows/tanuz-kalita Majuli loses land to the Brahmaputra every year. Three thousand native saplings went into the erosion-prone banks, and fifty kilos of weaving thread went to the households that live on them.
• Tawheed Zubair — school saplings in Moradabad /healthy-cities/fellows/tawheed-zubair Three Moradabad schools, two parks and 235 native and medicinal saplings. Five students in every school are Tree Monitors, and keeping them alive is their job. Eighty-eight per cent of the saplings made it.

Schools

• For schools /schools Six programmes, from a four-hour walk inside Delhi to twelve days down a thousand kilometres of river. All of them run for whole cohorts, all of them put a day of work in, and all of them are older than most of the peopl

Posters

• Posters /posters Campaign sheets made to go up on a wall.

Publications

• Publications /publications Not a catalogue. One book about a neighbourhood we worked in for years, one guide written to be carried into a shop, and one piece of research.

Impact

• Impact /impact Children, schools, rivers, trees and volunteers.

Farm

• Swechha Farm — school camps and stays near Delhi /farm Five acres of barren ground at Ladpuri, in the Khairthal-Tijara district of Rajasthan — on the Haryana border, in the Mewat region, where the Aravallis run — ninety minutes from Delhi. One tree stood on it. It is now a F

Get involved

• Get involved — give, volunteer or partner /act Give money, give a morning, or bring us a ward, a river stretch or a cohort.

About

• About Swechha — an environmental NGO in Delhi /about That is roughly what swechha means. Nobody was assigned to the river. Everyone who has ever cleaned it turned up — and the organisation that grew out of that is named after the reason they came.