Mr. Anshu Gupta

Known as the Clothing Man, Anshu has created a unique mechanism by making use of discarded urban materials to serve the marginal communities (mostly in rural areas). Through his organization – GOONJ, he has managed to bridge the gap between urban and rural communities. Today Goonj is a pan India movement working equally widely in cities and villages, dealing with more than 3000 tons of material annually. Through its team, thousands of volunteers and grassroots partner organizations, Goonj provides urban underutilized material to far flung village communities to address their basic needs. Goonj’s award winning initiatives; Cloth for Work (CFW), Not Just a Piece of Cloth (NJPC) and RAHAT focus on humanitarian aid, community development and disaster relief work across 22 states of India. This leads to over 2000 infrastructure activities across village India every year. In the cities, Goonj has a unique distinction of using anything and everything discarded; from a stapler pin to industrial generators and anything else in between, while Anshu has inculcated among the urban masses, a habit of mindful regular giving for a cause.He has taken the menacing growth of urban waste and used it effectively and efficiently as a tool to trigger large scale development work on diverse issues in some of the most backward and remote pockets of India. In the process he has created a model for a parallel economy which is not cash based but trash based.