Conditional giving and an efficient distribution system are improving rural communities

Visit Newsbreak's microsite on Corporate Social Responsibility in the Philippines for more stories and data on corporate giving.

Clean clothes are like gold for the folks in the outskirts of rural Bihar, Assam, Maharashtra and other states in India. As poor people scrounge for food, new and fresh garments are the least of their concerns.

In 1991, Anshu Gupta, a graduate student from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication, witnessed the magnitude of this crisis when he traveled to Uttarkashi, a poor town in the northern part of the country. It is while talking to a five-year-old girl that he felt the urge to do something about the situation. “When I feel cold, I hug dead bodies,” the girl told him, as people froze to death in winter due to the lack of clothing.

Seven years after, Anshu left his job as a corporate communications manager and established Goonj, an organization that aimed to collect clothes from urban areas and distribute them to the poor. He began with 67 clothes.

Now that Goonj is about to reach its tenth year, its volunteers have risen to 300, and the 67 clothes have increased to 20,000 kilograms of material distributed to 19 states in India every month.

But the mission of Goonj, which means echo, has expanded from providing clothes to building better communities and moving people to bridge the Great Divide in India, where the economy is on the rise but basic necessities remain far from the reach of its citizens.

BEYOND DOLE-OUTS

Anshu, a fellow of the group of global social entrepreneurs Ashoka, shared his vision to a Filipino audience during the Ashoka launch in the country in November 2007.

“Our goal is to move clothing out of the charity project,” he said.

While Goonj donates clothes under its Vastra-Daan movement, it also makes clothing a mobilizing factor for people to improve their communities. In its ‘Cloth for Work’ initiative, which started in 2005, clothes are used as a form of reward to the families for keeping their town clean. In Bihar, Assam and Maharashtra, villagers repair schools and construct roads in exchange for free, clean clothing.

Vastra-Daan’s unique distribution system is replicated in Goonj’s school-to-school (S2S) program. In Vastra-Daan, surplus from cities in a state are given to destitute communities in the same state so that the distribution could be closely monitored. Anshu receives comprehensive reports from about 60 local organizations in communities to ensure that the clothes reach their intended beneficiaries.

Goonj’s partnership with these local organizations plays a key role in determining the needs of a locality, as these organizations specify the gender ratio, dressing habits and number of people in their vicinities.

The system has proven to be effective that aside from clothes, Anshu decided to organize S2S where extra books, uniforms and other school supplies from schools in affluent cities are channeled to schools in need of such resources in impoverished villages.

S2S has been implemented in Mumbai, Bihar and Orissa with Mumbai as the donor. Anshu says that a single school with 1,500 to 2,000 students could already help four to five rural schools keep their students, as children often do not attend classes due to the dearth in resources. With its success in India, S2S has been given Ashoka’s Changemakers Innovation Award in 2004.

1,000,000 IN 2008

Another Goonj initiative which has been recognized internationally is the ‘Not Just A Piece of Cloth’ drive, where women in far-flung and poor areas are given clothes and sanitary napkins made from old but clean garments. Before the program, cases of women dying from infections were commonplace and infertility was high due to poor hygiene and lack of medical care. For curbing substandard hygiene practices and improving the health of women, ‘Not Just A Piece of Cloth’ was chosen the recipient of World Bank’s Development Marketplace award in May 2007.

Anshu’s idea of helping comes from a basic thought in philanthropy, that is turning one’s man waste into another man’s riches. Goonj does not wait for disasters to strike before people are provided with needs as basic as clean clothing.

When disasters do strike such as tsunamis and earthquakes, Goonj is ready as its Rahat relief program collects and stores clothes intended solely for disaster victims. Rahat has also been awarded with Changemakers Innovation Award in 2006.

Goonj is self-sustainable. The collection, sorting, packing, transport and distribution of clothes are done with a budget of 2 US cents per piece. Aside from asking donors to pitch in 2 cents for each garment, Anshu has found other ways to support Goonj's operations. He has asked companies and hotels to give them their old newspapers, which he would later sell to raise funds for Goonj. Scraps, rags and other old clothes are used as raw material for making bags, and waste paper is turned into notebooks. These items are sold in cities like New Delhi, proceeds of which go straight to Goonj's finances. These self-generating ways for resources all answer to the organization's principle, which is, 'nothing goes to waste.'

As 2008 enters, Anshu has set his eyes on clothing families in the 100 villages of Bihar. Last January 2007, Anshu and his Goonj team visited the communities, where people eat rats due to the lack of food, and children are made to sleep in holes dug by their parents during winter as protective clothing is inaccessible. Anshu aims to collect 1,000,000 kilograms of clothes for the villagers at the end of January 2008. These clothes should be earned, however, as the families will receive their garments after they implement a cleanliness campaign in their respective villages.

Anshu believes that Goonj and its efforts could be replicated in the country and all that is needed is somebody to step up to the challenge. “People with no background in NGO work like me could create change in their communities,” he said. “They just need to be passionate about their ideas, and everything would be possible.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Goonj's official website

---

INTERACT WITH THIS ARTICLE