Goonj

Project Rahat aims to respond to natural calamities in a fast, efficient manner and mobilize urban and rural citizens to help out with relief materials as required by the disaster struck area. It conducts regular sessions on the merit of giving and donation and draws attention to preventable disasters like death from cold in winter. Rehabilitation tool kits are provided to people affected by disasters to encourage them to stay in their places and not migrate to cities in search of employment.

Green by Goonj is an initiative by the organization to present handicrafts created by women in far-flung remote areas. It consists of a special edition of modern products, showcasing their aesthetics, craftsmanship and design sense created from stuff recycled out of objects and materials considered waste in the urban setting. It maintains a separate website where these products are displayed and are available for purchase through online ordering.

Goonj deals with over 3000 tons of material per year and initiates over 2500 development activities annually under its flagship initiative Dignity for Work earlier known as 'Cloth for work' (CFW), from repairing roads, recharging water ponds, and building bamboo bridges to digging wells besides interventions in sanitation, agriculture and tree plantation.

It has developed income generation initiatives like Sujni, school bag making, and Vapsi to bring back the disaster-hit local economy to normalcy. Also, it developed a method to transform disaster wastage into a resource for development work. This waste management method was used in the Gujarat earthquake and the floods in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Jammu and Kashmir. Goonj also collected material to help those affected by the floods in North East India.

Cloth for Work (CFW): CFW repositions cities urban discard as development resource for neglected rural India issues. Annually 3000+ tons of material is channelized to remote villages, motivating village communities to work on self identified issues in their areas. Over 3000 development activities every year on issues like water, infrastructure, education, agriculture etc are undertaken in 1700+ villages across India. It fulfills basic material needs of people, dignifies giving as lakhs of people don’t get material as charity but earn it as reward for their efforts. It also fills resource gaps in development work & provides a longer life to massive quantity of discard that would have been an environmental hazard.

S2S is an attempt to fill the gap of resources in rural schools by providing them basic school material like stationery, sports material etc. On the other hand Goonj motivates urban school children to give their unutilised school material for their rural counterparts. BUT instead of giving this material as charity, it is given as a reward for efforts made by children around issues of learning and behaviour like hygiene, attendance, discipline etc. Goonj reaches recycled school kit (comprising bag, belt, water bottle, pouches, cap, scarf, ball, mat, etc.) to students as a reward for behavioural changes. It supports libraries, computer centres, sports facilities and other education institutions in rural India. In 2016-17 alone, Goonj has dispatched 28,563 school kits in 15 states of India.