From Your Closet to a Box

"Every day is a learning experience"...so many times you would have heard this phrase. This is true only if you make this mantra a part of your everyday schedule. All you need to do is start jotting down the things you did each day and the learnings you had from those exercises. I began doing this exercise couple of months back and so have now gathered handful of every day learning experiences. This article, "From Your Closet to a Box", is a result of one such exercise that i did during my volunteering days. 

So many times, we would have seen corporates/social bodies running campaigns relating to Donating Clothes. I always wondered on the utility of these campaigns and how this would be benefiting the needy. During my volunteering days at a NGO, I found that children were wearing torn school uniform. It is not that the NGO didn't regularly distribute school uniforms to the children. In fact clothes and uniform distribution was a regular features of that particular NGO. The myth that resources channelised through NGOs (if not monitored) doesn't reach out to the target group is not always correct. Perhaps sometimes it doesn't but most of the time it does reach out to the people in need. 

Coming back to those children in the NGO. As you are aware, children are children, no matter whether they are rich or poor. They love to dirty their clothes, play in the dirt and dust as well as fight with fellow friends. Children in the NGO would also indulge in similar pleasures of childhood life and often come to class wearing torn uniform.I saw those children wearing torn shirts, trousers or skirts to the class. They would continue wearing till the uniform was deemed inappropriate by the class Teacher. 

Before this I never thought and considered the importance of clothes. It was during that period when I realised the value of clothes. For a good percentage of population, clothes that we hardly pay a heed to, are considered wearable. On several occasions, we discard a cloth material or dress because it has lost its sheen or the cool factor. One should never throw away or discard clothes because you don't like them or it is simply not trendy enough. Sometimes, I have seen that clothes generally sits in one's closet, with the individual not even being aware of the fact that such clothes do exist in his/her closet. It is thus important to frequently do a scrutiny of your own closet.One must make way for new clothes in their closet and way out for unused clothes. There are people who needs them. One should look for ways to donate good quality wearable clothes. 

Have you ever thought that clothes can be much more than donation items? So i did a little research to find if clothes can become more than mere donation items. My search took me to this organisation that is using discarded or unused quality clothes as a tool for social change and transformation. 

The organisation named, 'Goonj' (a social enterprise working with the mission to make clothing a matter of concern and to bring it among the list of subjects for the development sector ) are using clothes as well as other old materials as a powerful & proven tool for social change, huge resource for rural/slum development and a valuable asset for income generation. With the focus to make clothing accessible to one and all, Goonj is trying to use clothes as a means to alter the perception of the society that largely sees clothes as mere charitable thing to donate. Read more about Goonj and its initiative here [http://goonj.org/?page_id=1963] 

Khushboo