Anshu Gupta_Founder Director

GOONJIndia
Session ThemeRegional Report-Innovative Asian Social Entrepreneurs Addressing Asian Poverty Session Time11:00~13:00, Nov. 29 Presentation TitleMaking Clothing a Matter of Concern

Speakers Story
Popularly known as the Clothing Man, Anshu has taken mass communications courses (in journalism and advertising & PR) and he has a masters degree in economics. Anshu 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. An Ashoka Fellow and the Global Ambassador of Ashoka, Anshu is creating a mass movement for the recycling and reuse of tons of waste material by channeling it from the cities to the villages, as a resource for rural development. In the last 12 years GOONJ has been instrumental in highlighting the receivers dignity and positioning a citys discard as a precious resource rather than a waste fit for landfill sites. Under Anshus leadership GOONJ has won many prestigious awards including the CNN IBN Real Heroes Award, India NGO of the Year Award, Changemakers Innovation Awards (for its three initiatives), Development Market Place Award from the World Bank, Innovation for India award, and, more recently, the Lien i3 Challenge award, among many others. His other passions are photography and traveling. He travels extensively across the country trying to understand the needs of the people and building partnerships with organizations. His photographs are displayed at various forums including collection sites and act as powerful documentary of the desperate need of millions and the magic of giving. Over the years GOONJ has grown as a nationwide movement, involving thousands of people. Anshu is also working towards launching a nationwide youth movement not to oppose anything but to make them understand the real situation of millions of people and also to channel their positive energies in a constructive manner.

Speakers Organization
GOONJ is a nationwide movement addressing the most basic but ignored need of clothing and the multifaceted role it plays in village India. In winters, thousands suffer due to lack of proper clothing. In some parts of India people put their kids to sleep in a pit dug in the ground while countless women face five to seven days of indignity and massive health risk during menses using the dirtiest rag in the house, in the absence of spare clean cloth.

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On the other hand, there are vast quantities of discarded cloth and other material considered a waste and a burden in the cities. GOONJ is channeling it to village India as an invaluable resource for much needed development work. On one level, in the villages, the material is addressing many basic needs like woolens for winters, school dress for children or sanitary napkins for women, while in the cities, it is providing a constructive channel to the growing quantities of waste from urban households. On another level it is providing the critical nudge for urban & rural communities to get personally involved in addressing social issues. GOONJ encourages the villagers to identify their development issues, work on them and get clothes and other material as a motivation. Similarly, GOONJ is providing clean cloth sanitary napkins to village women while spreading awareness about the massive social and cultural taboos around menses, highlighting the hardships, the indignity and the huge health risk they face. On a macro level, the village level communities are being vitalized, as their standards of living are improving with material inputs. Other impact areas like education, environment, infrastructure building, are also having their own multiplier effects. Right now GOONJ has its own offices and voluntary set ups in 10 cities and is delivering roughly 50 tonnes of material every month to parts of more than 21 states of India.

Abstract
India, like many other fast developing Asian economies, faces the problem of a growing gap between the rich and the poor. But here the scale of everything is magnified many times over. As one part of the country is spoiled with choices between malls and multiplexes, the other half is still fighting the malnutrition death of their children. The basic needs of food, cloth and shelter are still a distant dream for millions. In the race of development, we find over 100 issues, from domestic violence to global warming, but somehow the basic need of clothing doesnt have a place in this. The fact that in developing nations we have accepted naked kids as a reality that does not even bother us, the fact that more people die in winters due to lack of clothing than earthquake or floods and worldwide we dont even maintain any simple data on the subject shows how ignorant we are and how have we underestimated something which is so basic and important. Marginalized people receive cloth as relief material after a disaster, in a world where half the world does not need a disaster: it is already in that state. Millions of women here face the monthly trauma of the nonavailability of a small piece of cloth to use as a sanitary pad when they are menstruating. They are forced to use sand, ash, jute gunny bags, mud, paper, grass - anything and everything which can absorb. The cases of woman dying of tetanus after using a piece of cloth with a rusted hook or a centipede entering womans body through a dirty cloth are not just couple of stories but an unreported reality for millions.

Anshu Guptas initiative GOONJ works towards making clothing a matter of concern. The idea is not only to create awareness and bring it onto the list of development subjects, but its also about the usage of this

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material as a resource. GOONJ is a story of using old cloth as a powerful tool of social change. Starting with 67 personal items of clothing, today it deals with tons of material every month in parts of 21 Indian states. With the repositioning of cloth beyond donations and charity, GOONJ is showing how it can be used for innovative initiatives, such as: Cloth for Work, to take care of infrastructural work in villages; Not Just a Piece of Cloth, where it is converted into very cost effective, environment friendly sanitary pads and has been a vibrant tool to open up one of the most taboo subjects; and School to School, where it is used as motivation for kids to come to school and study hard. This shows how communities struggling every day to survive with their meager resources are changing, not through vast resources and large investments, but with the help of some pieces of old cloth. This approach, addressing of ignored basic needs, wide ranging impact and the game changing element of this idea make it innovative and enterprising.

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