Hamper
Goonj doesn’t want to grow only as an organisation but as an idea
................
Photo:
Anshu Gupta
......................
SIDEBAR:
Anshu is now focused on ensuring that more people across the globe replicate Goonj’s idea and help bridge the massive gap of social and economic inequities between urban prosperity and rural poverty.
.................
Heading:
Goonj: Transforming the culture of giving in India
...............
Intro:
With a large scale civic participation ‘Goonj’ is not only becoming a big people’s movement for progress but is also creating a parallel economy where every work doesn’t have to wait for money; huge quantities of old re-usable material becomes a valuable resource. With his mantra, 'look beyond, see invisible', Anshu Gupta, founder of Goonj is looking forward to a parallel economy which is not cash based but is ‘trash’ based, says BHARATI PAWASKAR
..............
It is in giving that one receives. He has brought to the table an instinctive empathy, connecting with people, moving the focus from the conventional - giver’s pride to the unconventional - receiver’s dignity. “The world does not need thinkers anymore, what we need are doers,” states Anshu Gupta, India’s leading social entrepreneur and founder of an Indian based non-profit organisation - Goonj, that has changed the equation of rural poverty. In the cities, Goonj has a unique distinction of using anything and everything discarded; from a stapler pin to industrial generators and anything else in between.
Popularly known as the ‘clothing man’ Anshu was conferred the Ramon Magsaysay Award in June 2015 for his creative vision in transforming the culture of giving in India. Anshu’s enterprising leadership in treating cloth as a sustainable development resource for the poor reminds the world that true giving always respects and preserves human dignity.
Goonj has led to over 2000 infrastructure activities across villages in India every year, while Gupta has inculcated among the urban masses, a habit of mindful regular giving for a cause. In his words the best way to solve a problem is take it in your hands rather than blame the environment or expect other people to take care of it. His work goes to a core challenge of our times; the growing gap between urban prosperity and rural poverty. He has taken the menacing ‘use & throw’ culture of urban waste and used it effectively and efficiently as a tool to trigger large scale development work on diverse issues in some of the most backward and remote pockets of India. In the process he has created a model for a parallel economy which is not cash based but trash based.
Today, Goonj is a pan India movement working equally widely in cities and villages, dealing with more than 3000 tons of material annually. Through its team, thousands of volunteers and grassroots partner organisations, Goonj reaches out urban underutilised material to far flung village communities to address their basic needs, using it as a resource to motivate them to address a plethora of development issues like education, sanitation, women’s health, water conservation, infrastructure etc, based on their varied needs. While Goonj matches the urban material with specific needs of local village communities, actual receiving of the material is tied to local communities working on specific local issues that are self-identified by them.
Anshu has done his Mass Communications twice and his Masters in Economics. Starting as a freelance journalist, he left a corporate job in 1998 and founded Goonj with a mission to make clothing a matter of concern and to bring it among the list of subjects for the development sector. His mission was to address the most basic but ignored need of clothing and the multifaceted role it plays in villages across India. Using cloth as a metaphor for other crucial but ignored needs like sanitary pads or school material for education, for the last 16 years, under Anshu’s leadership Goonj has taken the growing urban waste and used it as a tool to trigger development work on diverse issues; roads, water, environment, education, health, etc, in backward and remote pockets of India.
Under Goonj’s flagship initiative ‘cloth for work’ village communities across India work on solving issues that bother them and get the urban material as a reward for their efforts. Cloth for work and all other initiatives of Goonj have received various, national and international awards and accolades. Some of Goonj’s award winning initiatives apart from Cloth for Work (CFW) are Not Just a Piece of Cloth (NJPC) and RAHAT focus on humanitarian aid, community development and disaster relief work across 22 states of India.
With Goonj, Anshu and wife Meenakshi has brought attention to a non-market, non-monetary approach - one grounded in empathy and dignity. He has made the mostly passive urban and rural masses, prime stakeholders and actors in addressing their own needs, solving their own problems. This has been done by weaving together a beautiful pipeline system from the cities to the villages to channelise resources to create empowerment and development in rural India. He considers it a central goal of Goonj to change the mind sets about the immense humanitarian potential in reuse and demonstrating a model that delivers as promised.
Anshu has rewritten many rules of the development sector like making the masses his prime focus - not only as givers and receivers of material but also as the prime source of money, skills and services. In the macro picture Anshu has identified some basic needs outside the radar screen of the development sector and the civil society by structuring imaginative solutions using urban waste.
Over the years as Goonj garnered major awards, including World Bank’s Development Marketplace and NASA, Anshu also won recognition as an Ashoka and Schwab Fellow while he was also listed as one of India’s top social entrepreneurs by Forbes Magazine and Fast Company. He is also a member of Humanitarian Crisis Council of the World Economic Forum.
Anshu is now focused on ensuring that more people across the globe replicate Goonj’s idea and help bridge the massive gap of social and economic inequities between urban prosperity and rural poverty. He speaks on national and international forums to instigate urban and rural masses to be more deeply engaged in the issues faced by the society.
“Goonj doesn’t want to grow only as an organisation; it wants to grow as an idea… where organisations and individuals across the world take up the work, learning from our experience and help reach the basics of life to people who need it urgently, mindful of their dignity and their needs, not as a charity,” shares Anshu.
Regarding the Magsaysay award he feels that it is a great recognition for him and his team at Goonj. For him, it has been a beautiful journey working for Goonj and he is happy that they have been able to change many lives in the course of time. It was an assurance that they are going in the right direction. “Finally cloth has been recognised as a charitable product. We will just continue to do the kind of work that we are doing and don’t think there will be any change in the way me or my team operates. People might start looking at us in a different way but that’s a separate thing. I never worked on target, I tried to utilise the maximum potential,” expresses Anshu who is looking beyond and seeing invisible.
Box 1 (must)
Look beyond, see invisible: Anshu Gupta
Anshu Gupta will offer a talk-cum-presentation ‘Look Beyond, See Invisible’ on January 17, at Institute Menezes Braganza between 6 to 8 pm in Panaji as a gesture of motivation to those who wish to give back to society in their own small way.
…………
Box 2
AWARDS AND FELICITATIONS
. CNBC TV18 Young Turks Change Agent award, 2016
· Ramon Magsaysay Award, 2015
· Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award, 2014
· Listed among World’s Top 10 Most Innovative Companies in India, 2014
· Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award by Schwab Foundation (sister concern of World Economic Forum), 2012
· Recognised as Game Changing Innovation by NASA & US State Department, 2012
· GDN-Japanese Award for Most Innovative Development Project, 2012
· Listed in Forbes as one of India’s most powerful rural entrepreneurs, 2010
· Innovation for India Award by Marico, 2010
· Jamnalal Bajaj CFBP Award for Fair Practices, 2010
· Changemaker’s Innovation Award for the initiative ‘Not just a piece of cloth’, 2009
· CNN IBN’s Real Heroes Award, 2009
· India NGO of the year Award by Resource Alliance, 2008
· GOONJ’s NJPC initiative won World Bank’s Global Development Market Place Award, 2007
