Chandigarh, Mar 22 (IANS): Akshyae Singh, who crowdsourced a video from his friends and family in Mohali on air pollution in Punjab, has bagged the first prize in the Clean Air Punjab competition. The second and third prizes were won by two students from Amritsar and Kharar, respectively.

In an initiative to empower the citizens, especially the students, to use smartphones to narrate powerful stories that talk about the rising air pollution and its health impacts, 'Let Me Breathe' -- a community platform which documents and shares stories on environment and sustainability -- recently conducted the Clean Air Punjab storytelling workshop.

As part of the workshop, Clean Air Punjab invited submissions in three categories -- decoding the sources of pollution, people's pollution stories and 'pind di' clean air innovation.

The competition drew a lot of interest among schools and college students who used innovative ways to narrate their stories visually. The competition also saw participation from young startup founders, climate activists as well as other citizens.

The first prize for the competition was bagged by Akshyae Singh, 18, who crowdsourced the video. The video had a visual-fiction start, covered the latest data points and included 10-plus interview bytes from residents.

The video highlights multiple issues such as sources of pollution like industrialisation and its health effects on children.

Anvi Sadana, a student of Class VIII from Amritsar, won the second prize, while the third prize went to Avneet Kaur, 15, from Kharar. Akshyae, Anvi and Avneet will pocket a purse of Rs 15,000, Rs 10,000 and Rs 5,000, respectively.

Even though as per the world air quality report, Punjab houses six of the world's 50 top polluted cities, the air pollution conversation in Punjab is often reduced to just stubble burning, ignoring the other sources of pollution.

The contest sought to capture these different sources of pollution and received over 70 entries.