About NGO:

We are a voluntary organization working to channelize the urban discard to the rural areas where they become an important economic resource, as well as a means for social empowerment. We believe in maintaining the dignity of the individual and began the Vastra-Samman movement that aims to provide clothing to the rural poor, but not as charity and not in exchange for their self-respect. The 'Cloth for Work' initiative, under this movement, provides clothing in exchange for work related to a specific social problem they are facing. While we started with 67 pieces of clothing, we now send our approx. 70 tons of relief material every month, the scale is growing and your support is needed to take us further.

Fund Usage:

Cloth for Work (C4W) is our initiative in which we work with the most underprivileged in the rural areas. For these people, issues are always multiple. Under C4W we, our partner organization and Goonj, identify a certain social problem being faced by the people of the community, such as dirty roads, lack of water, absence of school etc. A drive is then initiated to solve this problem, this maybe anything from cleaning roads, to digging a well to building a bridge, and the villagers are invited to participate. They are also informed that they will receive cloth instead of wages.

All those who participate are given the clothes and all those who didn't, are not. We have partnered up with various organizations working at the grass root level for better distribution of material. Our people travel the interior parts of the country in search for proper partner organizations that actually have an impact on the lives of the people. We provide them with material and guidelines about the distribution. At present we have partnered with more than 250 organizations across India and are aiming to reach 400 by the end of this year. The major costs we incur in this initiative are:

• Collection of the material
• Sorting of the material
• Packaging of the material
• Transportation of the material from the urban areas to the rural areas
• Monitoring the distribution of the material to the people

Impact:

A de-addiction centre based on clothing

It began with waking up at 5AM everyday. Getting ready, waking up his family and then getting the bread earner of the family, Raghu, ready. This could easily have been the story of anyone of us, except Raghu is a monkey. In the Badhwara Block of the Katni District, located in MP, it is rare to come across a family that doesn't get its daily necessities fulfilled by either dancing monkeys or dressing up and begging. They make around Rs. 50-60/- per day, something suitable for a life in the visicinity of stable, however when more than half of it goes in either alcohol, marijuana or tobacco, its pretty rare for a family to eat two square meals a day.

With such abysmal and unreliable sources of income, addiction was not just an added burden to family, it was a catastrophe. However, with a majority of the population hooked on to one drug or the other, it was almost impossible to break this vicious circle.

Manav Jivan Vikas Samiti a non-profit organization working in the area for quite sometime, decided that something needs to be done about the state of affairs. While simple donation of food or money would only encourage the people to get more drugs, something having a lasting impact was required.

Goonj is a non-profit organization based in Delhi, involved in chanelizing urban discard material to the rural areas; they had recently sent clothes as a relief material to Manav Jivan Vikas Samiti. As the general public of this area rarely has enough money for food, clothing was a luxury they did not even think about.

On May 31, 2007, MJVS held a campaign in which they distributed clothes to the entire family if the members of the family, took a pledge not quit their addiction. Along with proving information about the impact of these habits and the benefits they would have on quitting them, this campaign was a huge success. Over, 330 people in 85 families took the pledge and a total of 665 pairs of clothing were distributed.

Page Url :
http://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/ngo159_goonj.htm

Founded Year: 1999

Cause category: Others

Our Supporters

• Anshuman Gupta