I came across GOONJ, an NGO dedicated for the upliftment of rural areas in the Sunday magazine of EENADU paper some TWO months ago. The moment I read about their efforts for upliftment of rural areas by providing necessary items such as clothes etc, I decided, I should contribute something from my side. GOONJ which was founded by Anshu Gupta , who won Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2015 ,has developed a unique model of using old re-usuable clothes as the centre point for overall development of a rural area.
After interacting with Mr. Parithosh , who works at Hyderabad Office of GOONJ, I understood the working style of GOONJ. Its simple , identify an issue in rural areas and educate them towards what needs to be done for resolving the issue. And motivate them to work towards resolving the issue and in rewards you get good clothes for your contribution. Of course many others are also given , but the prime-mover of this movement is using re-usuable old clothes as driving point. This is because , I was explained that rural people, though may not be rich in terms of money, but they are rich in their value system. Hence you wouldn't find beggars in rural areas except in urban areas.So, as explained earlier, get work done towards benefit of their villages and in return clothes are given as a reward for their contribution instead of freely distributing the clothes.
As I was motivated by this concept, I decided to collect clothes from few of my friends,colleagues and neighbours as well. Initially , I aimed to collect atleast 100 clothes, but with help of my mom who spread out the word to all her friends, neighbours and relatives made me cross more than 300 clothes :). I was quite surprised, when after collecting the old clothes from all the generous people, the final number of clothes turned out to be more than 350.So special thanks to my dearest mom :)
The picture above is the total amount of the clothes collected and stuffed in 3 carton and 10 poly bags. I would like to extend my gratitude and thanks to everyone who contributed to this drive generously and thus helping the people in need.
The following is the list of people who have contributed to this drive. I once again thank each and everyone from my bottom of my heart for lending their hand for upliftment of society.
After two months of collection, I decided to give away all these clothes to GOONJ office in Hyderabad. So , with help of my best friend Mr. D. Venkatesh and his car, we stuffed all the cartons and polybags in his car. Initially, I was bit worried as to whether all the items can be stuffed inside the car or not, but somehow we managed to stuff them all as you can see the picture below. The items inside the car.
We went to GOONJ office in Hyderabad and had good interaction with Mr. Parithosh regarding the working of GOONJ. Finally after submitting the clothes to them , we headed back to our homes feeling satisfied that these clothes shall be put to some good use.
Below is the receipt from GOONJ about clothes received from us.
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| Click on the pic to enlarge |
Stay Happy and Keep smiling
Vamsi
P.S: I have decided to conduct this drive of collecting old clothes once every year in the month of October ;)
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