SOMETHING ABOUT GOONJ!


Everbody wants to contribute to the society in need as much as they can and donating Money is not the only way to do that. The easiest way we find to contribute is by giving away our old and used clothes and things to the people in need. But do we ever give a second thought about the clothes provided by us  are even  useful to the people or not? We just mindlessly give away all the old clothes we find at our place but are those clothes even useable?

Here is where GOONJ comes in picture. Anshu Gupta founded this organisation in 1998 after leaving a well paying  corporate. He made this huge selfless move because he believed in his cause. And the cause was that rich or poor everybody deserves the right of proper clothing!

The concept of GOONJ is optimum utilization of resources. No matter how good our intentions are to help people, donated clothes always end being misutilized. He observed that people in need were not getting the required clothes and people were so thoughtless that they were even donating torn clothes or even used underwears!

What GOONJ does is take the old donated clothes in wash and clean it. Even REPAIR the clothes if needed. And then send it where it is required. Like warm clothes are required in the northern the most, it will be useless if sent anywhere else. Donated Jeans for women are useless in village so only sarees are sent for tribal women.

In short it sorts clothes as per the regional requirement and then sends the clothes to the affected area. GOONJ sorts approximately 3000 tons of clothes annually now!

GOONJ also makes sanitary napkins out of unused clothes and provide it in tribal areas. They came across an incident where a tribal women died of septic while using an old piece of unhygienic colth. Tribal women are devoid of even basic need of sanitary napkins and GOONJ helps these women without voice.

Goonj also provides employment to rural people by employing them in making mattress and other things out of not useable clothes.

A simple thought yet such a huge difference! Just sorting clothes makes such a huge impact. The clothes reach where they are required the most and there is no wastage of any resources!

A small initiative started by Anshu and his wife to provide the required clothes to poor and homeless has now become a huge organization reaching across more than 20 states! And how wonderful is that!

I came across this organisation while reading a book and found this an excellent, thoughtful organization worth sharing with everyone.

If you wish to know more or be a part of it you can always vist the site : www.goonj.org
  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review : Funny Side Up By Ruskin Bond!

Image
This is my second book by Ruskin Bond. This book is basically a collection of stories from daily happenings of Ruskin Bond. A detailed description of when he wakes up, what he does after he wakes up, his afternoon routine, his evening walks, in short about his daily routine in general. He shares his experience by transitioning from the Dehra of his childhood versus Dehra now. He talks about what he loved while growing up. There are so many characters that made an impact on his life. His little experiences which he remembers precisely even after so many years are kind of funny to read. Ruskins story of his pet and his adventures rather misadventures with uncle ken are presented as short stories in the book and are light hearted to read. There is nothing much you can find in the book. No story or biography or anything just little life experiences. Its just nothing about nothing! 2.5 stars out of 5!
Read more

Book review: Ladies coupe by Anita Nair

Image
This book revolves around a very hot topic “Feminism”. It is a story of a single woman in her 40s. Akhila has always been a good daughter, good sister, a good woman all her life. After the death of her father she becomes the man of the house. She starts earning at a small age of 19!  When her siblings come of age one by one they all get married totally forgetting about Akhila. They still try to control Akhilas life by saying she needs to take the permission of the man of the house even though she is an independent woman who has held her family together. She starts thinking is she really lonely and unhappy? Does a woman really need a man to make her life complete? Fed up of all the interferences in her life and to find all her answers she sets out on an adventure trip alone with a one way ticket to Kanyakumari. She meets 5 more women in her ladies coupe. One by one she listens to every persons story while thinking back on her own life. Life stories one coming from
Read more

Book Review : Coming up next!

Image
Okay so this book is about a women named Katie in her 40s getting sacked from a show on which she has been working on for more than 10 years. From there things pretty much goes down in Katies life! Suddenly everything in her life seems to go wrong and that is when the book also starts to go wrong. This book literally goes nowhere till 100th page. Just Katie and her sad little life, who instead dealing with her issues choses to get over drunk everytime and ruin things more. Seriously this got so irritating after a point that i started skipping pages. There are so many characters and they seem to keep coming up out of no where. Most of them were unnecessary. And there is no built up of story either. Its just Katie being drunk and ruining things and for other characters it just feels like they are all writing their personal diary at the end of the day! I really enjoy reading a lot but with this book i just wanted this to end as soon as possible. If you really a
Read more