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GOONJ...
a voice, an effort
Some milestones in our
life
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FACTS :
- Started in 1998 with 67
personal clothes, nine years later GOONJ is channelising more
than 20,000 kgs of material every month
- GOONJ has its own
offices in four cities and voluntary set-ups in few other cities.
Implementation in different parts of 20 states, working with over
100 partner groups including Indian Army, Ashoka Fellows, social
activists, Panchayats etc.
- Head office in Delhi
(7 coordinators and 40 support people) with formal operations
in Mumbai (1 coordinator and 3 support people), Chennai (1 coordinator
and 30 support people) & Jalandhar. (1 coordinator & 1
support person).
- A five member governing
body, over 300 volunteers-spread all over India. Anshu K. Gupta,
an Ashoka Fellow, is the Founder Director of GOONJ.
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GOONJ
INITIATIVES : TIMELINE
-
'‘Vastradaan’
in 1998' : our
nationwide movement highlighting the importance of cloth as
a basic need of poor. Started with 67 personal clothes, now
providing over 20000 kgs of material every month.
- 'RAHAT
in 1999 '-
our initiative for reaching relief in annual disasters like floods
and winters and other natural calamities - active in relief operations
during all the major disasters since the Chamoli earthquake in
1999.
-
‘School
to School’ in 2004' - establishing a relationship
between urban and rural schools by channelising school supplies
from one to another. Building a sense of empathy among urban
children towards the needs of their rural counterparts.
-
‘Not
just a piece of cloth’ in 2005 - addresses
the basic need of village women by providing clean cloth sanitary
napkins. Actively campaigning in rural & urban India to
generate awareness on this taboo issue.
-
'Cloth
for Work’ in 2005' - Cloth distribution
not as charity but as a development resource. Initiating village
level development activities, using cloth as remuneration, generating
employment & adding an element of dignity to the recipients
in the process.
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TANGIBLE
RESULTS
- Many
fold increase in material generation
: from 67 clothes to 20,000 kgs a month and the changing quality
of material highlights the changing mindsets of people; earlier
people mostly gave us their clothes and other household material
but over the years we are also getting more costlier items like
computers, office furniture etc.
- More
urban schools becoming part of our School to School (S2S) network
: Right now more than 40 Delhi schools, 6 Mumbai
schools & 5 Jalandhar schools, are active partners of S2S
programme.
- More
volunteers and collection centers : Right now
we have more than 300 volunteers from all walks of life; housewives,
retired people, young professionals etc. spread all across India.
They approach schools, organize collection camps and help in our
interaction with the corporates. We have 30 collection centers
in Delhi and 6 centers in Mumbai right now; homes of volunteers
who have very generously offered their spaces as collection points
where people can leave material for GOONJ. The growing base of
volunteers is helping us spread to other states and to other countries.
- More
corporates working with us
: Last year, in Delhi alone more than 30 corporates partnered
with us in organizing collection camps for their employees. Maruti,
American Express, Xansa, etc Added to this list is Deutsche Banks’
support for GOONJ’s Tsunami reject cloth project, HSBC’s
support to our Mumbai S2S programme and Hewitt’s sponsoring
of Pratibimb, our annual event.
- Spread
of work across India : Reached all the way to
Kashmir, down to Tamil Nadu and from Assam to Bihar. With material
reaching parts of 19states, the number of grassroots level organizations
and activists has also grown phenomenally.
- Intensifying
our work in the villages : We started with Vastradaan
i.e reaching cloth to people but over the years we have addressed
various issues at the village level. Our Tsunami rejected cloth
project in Chennai, a disaster reject of colossal proportions
(more than 100 trucks of rejected cloth) has already benefited
people in the Tsunami affected areas in Tamil Nadu. A big consignment
of woolens from here, even reached the earthquake hit in Kashmir
& Pakistan apart from many other states where it went as part
of our winter campaign. With a huge quantity of un-wearable cloth
resulting from rigorous sorting, GOONJ women workers are making
hundreds of clean cloth sanitary napkins and school bags to benefit
village women in Firozabad (U.P), quarry workers in Tamil Nadu
and many others.
- Refining
our Disaster relief efforts : GOONJ started its
disaster relief work during the Chamoli earthquake in 1999. Later
we worked directly during the Gujarat Earthquake and the Gujarat
Riots. We have continued initiating our annual campaigns –
RAHAT Winters (winter relief) and RAHAT Floods (monsoon floods
relief), which spread across to Bihar, Rajasthan, Assam, West
Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhar Pradesh and many other states. At the
time of Tsunami with funds of just Rs. 3.00 lac, with GOONJ’s
strong linkages relief material worth Rs. 15 Million was generated.
- S2S
bringing changes in rural schooling : In just
the first year of proper implementation of S2S we saw major changes
in many village schools. Around 600 students of Kuthambakam (work
area of Ashoka Fellow Elango in Tamilnadu) now wear uniforms,
all collected from various S2S partners schools in Delhi. A number
of them wear uniform shoes, carry school bags instead of polythene
bags and have better toys to play with. A school in Sunderban
Delta area of West Bengal now has a proper activity centre with
a lot of toys and games and students spend much better and quality
time in the school, where the lack of a teacher has always been
a problem. In Nagni, Uttaranchal, in many schools majority of
the children now have sweaters or coats in the winters, they have
a mat to sit on (made of useless cloth by GOONJ..) and copies
and other stationary. Based on our school material support our
partner groups are opening new schools in child labour (glass
& Bangle industry) affected areas, Firozabad (Uttar Pradesh).
With the help of toys, games, story books collected from the city
schools we have initiated many children recreation/ activity centers
in village schools . We are directly supporting many Non-formal
schools specially meant for quarry & cracker industry child
workers in Tamil Nadu, glass industry child workers in Firozabad
and for the Moosahari community children in Bihar.
- Replication
of work; The real change is happening in the way
people from different walks of life are replicating our work and
how its changing mindsets. Urban women who didn’t even know
what their own maid used during her periods are suddenly waking
up to the harsh realities of the immense health risk village women
put themselves into by using dirty cloth. Public school kids who
study in air-conditioned classes and travel in a/c buses are shocked
to find that their village counterparts walk 5 kms to come to
a school with no chairs, tables or a teacher. Many urban citizen’s
are finally realizing that a single column news of floods in West
Bengal or Bihar appearing in the 4th or 5th page in a national
daily is a actually a big annual disaster where thousands of people
loose all that they have.
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THE INNOVATIVE ASPECT
- Old
material as resource: GOONJ has turned a vast
surplus of every day necessities lying idle as waste in urban
homes into a substantial economic resource. The old material normally
considered a burden in urban homes, is influencing the quality
of education in rural schools through GOONJ’s School to
School programme, women’s health through clean cloth sanitary
napkins made from completely un-wearable cotton cloth and addressing
neglected village level development issues through the Cloth for
Work programme.
- Civic
participation and a nationwide urban rural network
: The building of a reliable and time-tested network in both the
rural & urban areas means our wide spread presence, which
helps us respond to any kind of geographical and cultural aspect.
With an active network in place, our response time for generating
& channelising resources becomes much quicker than any other
organization especially at the time of disasters. In the cities
we work throughout the year on educating the common masses about
the sensitivities of giving i.e understanding the cultural, social
and geographical aspects. It also involves the masses in a big
way in development work i.e common women going about their lives
in the cities, feel they have contributed in some way to improving
their rural counterparts lives by giving us their old cotton saries/suits
which are turned into clean cloth sanitary napkins for women who
don’t even have enough to cover their bodies.
- Nationwide
spread and large scale sustained operations :
Many efforts at distributing clothes and other house hold material
have been usually small, sporadic, one-time deeds where there
is indiscriminate collection of material and random distribution.
Also these mostly happen during times of disasters while the reality
is that half the country does not need a disaster to be helped.
GOONJ’s uniqueness lies in thinking and putting in place
a continuous all through the year efficient, systematic channel
on a nationwide scale. GOONJ has evolved as a nodal agency for
generating vital resources, which is also well equipped to respond
to disasters. The innovation lies in developing a model where
the necessity for such an outlet lies as much with the donors
as with the beneficiaries
- Win
win situation for the donor and the beneficiary
: Without any financial burden to the giver or the beneficiary
GOONJ.. has effectively used the wastage of urban India in different
ways towards development activities in rural India. Addressing
the basic need of clothing (VASTRADAAN), forming a long term relationship
between urban and rural schools to motivate village kids towards
education (School to School), addressing one of the most neglected
& taboo women’s health issue (clean cloth sanitary napkins-Not
just a piece of cloth). In urban India we are touching upon the
hitherto untouched area of sensitizing agencies, government and
the masses regarding dignity of disaster victims, need based donations
and optimal utilization of disaster surplus material (Tsunami
rejected cloth project), sensitizing urban people/corporates regarding
recycling & reuse of vital resources like paper ( providing
notebooks to village kids made of one side used paper).
- A
charitable activity turned into a development activity :
GOONJ has successfully transformed cloth giving from a charitable
act into a development activity with its ‘Cloth for work’
programme. Our village level grass-root partners identify activities
like road building, cleanliness drive etc where the beneficiaries
work towards the betterment of their own area and get clothes
as remuneration for their work. Our aim is to ultimately make
large-scale resource mobilization a reality. GOONJ is the first
effort where instead of focusing on a limited target group or
limited product, we are trying to spread awareness at such a wide
level that anytime an urban household thinks of disposing off
reusable materials it’s aware of a channel through which
it can be ultimately utilized to the fullest.
- Innovative
recycling of resources : The innovative recycling
and a big value chain process is our strength, which adds value
to the discarded material .
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GOONJ's CLOTH SANITARY
NAPKIN PROJECT
- Goonj recently won World
Bank’s Development Marketplace award for this project.
- Goonj Cloth Sanitary napkins
are made from the ultimate wastage (completely un-wearable cloth)
left after the rigorous sorting process.
- In the next two years Goonj
plans to reach these cloth napkins to approx. 1,70,000 women,
in a phased manner.
- These women will also be
provided awareness about the health and hygiene issues related
with menses. Goonj will be implementing this project, together
with its partner groups.
- State Approach: Each metro
will support in its region i.e. material from Delhi in North India
will support initiatives in neighboring states of U.P, Kashmir
and Bihar, reducing transportation expenses with better matching
of needs.
- Adding a city every year:
GOONJ plans to add one big city every year, strengthening material
generation and reaching more beneficiaries.
- Making cloth rich communities;
In the coming 2-3 years, apart from the napkins, the beneficiaries
will also have more clothes under our other ongoing programs.
Thus the dependence on GOONJ for the physical product of cloth
napkins will automatically diminish.
- NGOs, individuals and groups
will also be able to buy these napkins to reach in their own areas.
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