Working for the poorest of poor

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, December 21

Piles of discarded clothes, denims, shoes, books, old audio tapes and one-side used papers reach the house of philanthropist Neena Sondhi at Football Chowk every day. A guard directs the visitor to keep the pile in the open for some hours; it is then sanitised and kept in a shed for 24 hours before it goes for sorting and packaging for being transported to NGO Goonj’s office in Sarita Vihar, New Delhi.

One of the directors of leading sports goods manufacturing company FC Sondhi & Co, Neena has set up a dropping centre for Goonj at her house. Every two months or so, she gets the items dispatched via a truck to the NGO headquarters from where it is further sorted. The good, wearable clothes make way to the poorest of poor across India.

The not-so-good stuff including the audio tapes are recycled and designed as rugs, school bags, hand bags, pouches, wall hangings and key chains and then sold off with a brandname ‘Greens by Goonj’. This stuff reaches back as well to cater to the buyers in the urban areas and use the money for the NGO work. The soft cotton T-shirts are used for making sanitary pads. Some clothes are also sent for use of digging wells, cleaning water bodies, etc. The second hand books are made to reach the children who cannot afford them. The one-side used papers come handy for recycling or printing literature and other material on the other side.

“I am a big fan of Anshu Gupta, Goonj founder and Ramon Magsaysay Award winner. He founded it 19 years ago. I met him when he had been running it for two years or so and was totally impressed with how and what he does. He does not even waste the staples that usually come in the postage. He gets them all collected and sells them as scrap,” the septuagenarian shared.

Neena added, “We ask all those offering discarded stuff to pay Rs100 as transportation charges for we have to bear the carriage cost as well. But only 2 per cent people do that but we don’t mind bearing some cost from our side.”

She also showed how she had engaged about eight women in knitting for making new, designer pullovers for women and children to be distributed through Goonj. “This is my personal project and contribution for the NGO I am really fond of. We pay Rs100 to every woman for knitting 100 gms of woollen stuff. We give them wool by weight,” said the businesswoman-turned-social activist, who settled in England in the earlier years of her life.