World4Good Blueprint: Human-Focused Solutions that Work
Meet The Founder Of Goonj Anshu Gupta
Anshu Gupta is one of India’s most charitable men, creating projects to help rural people find food, clothing, and shelter while empowering them with skills to sustain a livelihood for their families.
Anshu completed his Mass communication and did his masters in Economics in India and started his career as a freelance journalist where his exposure to the frontlines made him want to make a difference. In 1998 he established Goonj to focus on supplying clothing for the needy. He noticed that a lot of humanitarian aid provided essentials but not many gave consideration to clothing. But he wanted to broaden his focus further.
Anshu began launched multiple projects in rural India that didn’t offer bandaid solutions but permanent solutions. He focused on the ‘pipeline idea,’ which delivered goods from cities to villages to improve livelihoods.
Goonj is a company that works on transforming old raw materials and resources into hundreds of rural development projects. The community’s activities revolve around various rural assignments from building long extended bamboo bridges, bundling large landmass areas, digging up wells, designing drainage systems, creating small canals for irrigation, road repairs, and even cleaning up natural water bodies. All this is carried out by using old raw materials that are reused.
Anshu says, “Goonj doesn’t want to grow only as an organization, it wants to grow as an idea… where organizations and individuals across the world take up the work, learning from our experience and help reach the basics of life to people who need it urgently. Mindful of their dignity and their needs, not as charity.”
1. Goonj School Projects
Goonj’s award-winning activities for the schools tackle the need for education for thousands at remote locations by redestributing excess materials from city schools to villages. In rural areas, scores of kids leave schools because of lack of resources such as pencils, water bottles, notebooks, education material and stationery, and little parental capacity income to keep them in school.
2. Goonj Relief Efforts
Goonj has an initiative called Rahat that focuses on relief and rehabilitation services for disaster prone areas that experience cyclones, floods, tsunamis, and earth quakes. It also educates people on survival tips and how to mitigate injuries and fatalities.
3. Goonj Going Green
Goonj is also known for its eco-friendly products, empowering local artists and craftsmen, to recycle material to create more than 100 different products such as bags, mats, file folders, and household goods.
4. Goonj and Health Care
When it comes to health care, Goonj addresses the need for social distancing for families who currently are large numbers living in small confined spaces. It has also facilitated the aid by front-line workers to rural families, offering medical devices and kits.
5. Goonj Feeding The Hungry
They also supports social community kitchens with vegetables and fruits so the villages have access to everyday nutrition. During the Covid pandemic, Goonj even supplied PPE Kits, gloves, masks, oximeters, and other healthy essentials.
Over the past decade, Goonj has been recognized for its social impact as Anshu focuses on duplicating and sharing his project modules to help other countries eradicate rural poverty. His company has received awards from the likes of NASA, the World Bank’s Development Marketplace, as well as Ashoka and Schwab Fellows.
Learn more about Goonj and get involved.
