GOONJ's urgent appeal to provide for winters in the the flood affected districts of Bihar

This year we certainly need much larger quantities due to extensive work going on in flood affected areas of Bihar & Orissa. We are thankful to a large number of organizations & individuals who whole-heartedly supported our campaign

Rahat Floods.

Right now is probably the

lowest point in the last 4 months of Bihar floods.

Do contact

Ruchika on ruchikagoonj@gmail.com

Priyanka on riyankagoonj@gmail.com

• So far GOONJ has reached more than 150 remote villages in these districts with various kinds of relief material and other interventions.
• In most of these villages GOONJ was the first organization to reach material with its partner groups.
• GOONJ is working with over 18 partner groups in Bihar including established voluntary organizations, young organizations, Gandhian groups, youth groups & Panchayat.

Implementation -

GOONJ reached these areas (walking, by boat and motorcycles) working together with many Gandhian organization & volunteers. In its phased relief operations, GOONJ focused on the worst affected villages like Madhubani, Udhampur, Kalagovindpur, Mendipur, Gariya.

Providing material-

So far 4000 winter kits have been provided to 4000 families. A GOONJ winter kit is designed to take care of a families long term needs. It includes two thick blankets, 2 mats and 10 to 15 woolens (2 woolen per family member) - Sanitary napkin- Sent over 1 lakh napkins so far (made out of waste cotton cloth under our initiative 'Not just a piece of cloth') to Bihar & Orissa. This was one of the most ignored relief material in all the camps.

Innovative initiatives

• Disaster wastage as resource:

  GOONJ has officially tied up with the Saharsa district administration to look after the vast quantities of clothing received by it during the floods.(estimated at about 30 trucks load)
• Gudri project; GOONJ is developing centers in Bihar to convert old waste cloth into Gudri. Apart from protecting people from extreme cold it will generate large-scale employment in the region. Each person will be given raw material for three Guddri blankets; they will keep 2 Gudri and give back one to GOONJ. At many centers people will be trained and paid for making these Gudris. - 3 similar Guddri making centers are being initiated.in flood affected areas of Madhepura & Supaul. - NEEV, a Jamshedpur based organization, has sent 300 Gudris to Bihar.Various centers of XLRI-GOONJ Cloth Bank at Jamshedpur will be supplying raw material to NEEV, to scale it up to 5000 Gudris.

Mobile Medical boat;

CHEHAK-

VAAPSI

Financial contributions to GOONJ so far:

Mumbai Group of Friends, Shri Neminath Jain foundation, TCS, RBS, Orange, E&Y etc

Colgate Palmolive- 31.60 lakh, Sonata Software Ltd- 16.60 lakh, Shell India- 10.00 lakh, Axis Bank- 11.00 lakh & Arpan Foundation- 12.00 lakh

The local Schools, colleges & the local public was involved in an awareness rally resulting in collection of nearly two truckloads of cloths. After closing their dispensaries & shops, the doctors & Chemists used to work beyond midnight, sorting & packing the collected material. A large number of volunteers spent long hours in sorting material as per GOONJ guidelines. - 1298, TNT IOC got together to organize a drive in Mumbai and sent huge quantities of material to Saharsa. - Mehekar, a small town in Buldana district, organised a rally and collected a truckload of material.

Well known dancer Mallika Sarabhai's organization Darpana became a successful collection center in Ahmedabad during the campaign. 'Dream a dream ' at Bangalore & Aham Bhoomika at Bhopal were also some of the few very successful collection points for GOONJ.. - Carrefour Foundation made a timely contribution of about 40,000 meter of new cloth for making cloth sanitary napkins with which we are able to generate over 1.5 lakh napkins. In Orissa GOONJ tied up with two well-respected organizations - Biswa & Adhikar. Even though Orissa was also affected by one of the worst floods, it hardly got any attention from the media and the rest of the country.. As a result very few agencies reached there.

Unfortunately by declaring/describing these as normal, annual floods, very little is being done.

GOONJ has reached over 20 trucks load of material so far. We are committed to a long-term operation/involvement especially in view of the impact of ongoing winters.