Goonj, a voluntary organisation, is initiating Vastra Samman (dignifying clothing), a pan-India campaign, to collect about one crore units of material in the 'Joy of Giving Week' being celebrated across India from 27th September to 3rd October.

Goonj will use the collected material as resource under 'Cloth for Work' for development activities in the villages, school material and toys to support rural or slum schools and anganwadis; and useless cloth to make mats, school bags and the entire cotton waste material to be converted into sanitary napkins.

This means you will find thousands of children getting school material, thousands of women getting napkins and also hundreds of roads getting repaired, lakhs of trees being planted, work on water bodies etc. across the country where people will receive this material as reward as a part of 'Cloth for work'.

In 2008, when Kosi river flooded parts of Bihar, Goonj Bangalore volunteers Smitha Anand and Srividya Natarajan helped collect 14 tons of clothing for the flood affected.

Goonj, Bangalore is also looking for volunteers to help with the initiative, and needs help with temporary storage spaces.  Do write to us if you want to become a part of this campaign. You can also support the initiative with monetary contributions.

Smitha is a VLSI Board design engineer at Wipro Technologies and a volunteer for Goonj,  Bangalore.

Citizen Matters encourages citizen reporting. For more, see section on citizen journalism in our terms and conditions.

See articles on