Goonj is a movement, a reformation, an ideology, and is a voice towards the society and a need that is constantly ignored. Be it the heart-wrenching floods in Kashmir, Orissa, or Kerala, or the riots in Muzaffarnagar, Delhi, and other places. Be it a natural disaster or human involved massacres and poverty.
Each place and situations have a lending hand of help from the volunteers of Goonj to get their lives back on track. The growing urban waste has been taken by Goonj and utilized to work on diverse issues and trigger development work such as health, education, environment, water, and roads.
Goonj NGO is a non-governmental organization. Its headquarters is in Delhi. Founded by Ashu Gupta. He has completed his education at the Indian Institute of Mass communication.
In 1999 Anshu Gupta, accompanied by his wife Meenakshi Gupta and close friends, decided to start Goonj towards meeting people’s basic needs as this had no place in the country’s development plan.
What is Goonj?
Anshu Gupta beautifully explains Goonj as a positive virus that has no limitations. It doesn’t matter whether you belong to a specific religion or community Goonj looks at each individual just as individual seeking help to survive. The common misconception people interpret about Goonj is that they gather clothes and distribute them.
The truth is not just the clothes; there is an infinite number of second-hand and first-hand materials and valuable things that Goonj has converted into reward or currency focusing on denting the concept of charity.
This idea of Anshu Gupta believes that charity somewhere ends an individual’s dignity in society. Hardcore rural development, water, and sanitization are the core focus of this NGO. They work on issues that are just left untouched on the government papers for years.
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From the State of Shock to an Incredible Breakthrough
It happened to be that Anshu Gupta once visited New Delhi and came across a rickshaw driven by a person named Habib. His full-time job was to pick up unclaimed corpses around the city. The overgoing cold, hunger, lack of medical support often causes death among the poor community in India.
Anshu Gupta spent one week observing this, which was stressful and alarming. Habib complained that he is overburned by the work of gathering dead bodies during winter. The man used to get 2 meters of cloth and ₹20 on each dead body collected. The ratio was so huge that 12 to 14 dead bodies were picked within 24 hours during the season.
Anshu realized that it was not the cold that was killing people, and it was the lack of necessities that causing the disaster. Habib’s daughter Kaniz once told the founder that she sleeps with the corpse when she feels cold. This was the life-changing moment when they started Goonj with 67 clothes gathered from their house, being clueless about registration.
Anshu Gupta is one such gem of a person who gives you a different view of life. Things were not the same back then when Goonj started. With a lot of hustle and hardships, this man has successfully given a new life to people throughout India.
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