VOs Meet with Magsaysay Awardee #AnshuGupta @goonj.org @goonj

09 February 2021, Hazaribagh: NBJK organized a meeting of chief functionaries of VOs from Jharkhand with Mr. Anshu Gupta (Founder-Goonj, New Delhi), a Magsaysay awardee. Mr. Satish Girija (Secretary, NBJK) has welcomed Mr. Anshu Gupta & Team Goonj with bouquet and honored them by adorning with shawls.

Mr. Anshu Gupta said about the need to change some terms like charity, donor, recipient etc because self respect of the people for whom we work must be valued to bring actual change. He said that Goonj contributes to uplift quality of lives by using the under-utilized urban material as a tool to trigger development with dignity across the country in partnership of 465 VOs. It’s noteworthy that during COVID relief campaign, Goonj became a medium to distribute 50 lakh tons of food grain and it makes 6000 tons unutilized materials useful every year to benefit around 27 lakh people in more than 4600 villages.

Mr. Anshu Gupta talked about the need to work in Jharkhand intensively upon the issues like waste management, agriculture, road, water, forest, women, children, disability etc. We can transform the labour of our target group as a resource, can make a small bathroom in every house for women or even construct community bathrooms for them at residential areas and may facilitate their menstrual health management in a better way, he pointed out. Mr. Anshu Gupta requested VOs representatives for innovation by better use of unutilized materials and stated that despite amazing work on COVID relief by voluntary sector, recent amendments of FCRA are like a setback for VOs and we all should raise our voice collectively.

Mr. Satish Girija has thanked Mr. Anshu Gupta, team Goonj along with participant VOs, suggested Water Management as a core issue for VOs in Jharkhand this year and expressed hope for support from Goonj. Also Mrs. Minakshi (Co-founder, Goonj), Mr. Suresh Kumar, Mr. Shivji, Mr. Ajeet (all from Goonj) and representatives of 25 VOs from Hazaribagh, Ranchi, Bokaro, Chatra, Giridih, Lohardaga and Gumla districts of Jharkhand were present during the program. Mr. Rajiv Singh, Mr. Shankar Rana and Ms Niki Soren from NBJK have contributed in organizing the event.