Gupta's NGO Goonj works across 21 states and has dealt with 1000 tonnes of used material.
Founder of NGO Goonj, Anshu Gupta along with whistleblower and former Chief Vigilance officer at AIIMS Sanjiv Chaturvedi are the two Indians selected for this year's Ramon Magsaysay Award.
Here is what you need to know about Gupta and the work of his NGO Goonj-
- In 1999, Anshu Gupta left his job to start his NGO.
- Speaking to the Business Standard, Gupta said the inspiration to start Goonj came from his own life. A fatal accident fractured his legs and it was feared he would not walk again. He was bedridden for a year. His father refused to pay a doctor who asked for bribe to treat. This honesty made him "empathetic, thoughtful", he says.
- Goonj was started by Gupta as a campaign called 'Not Just a Piece of Cloth' after the tsunami in 2004. The campaign recycled old cotton to be made into sanitary pads for underprivileged women and distributed over 2.5 million pads for the cost of Rs.2.
- Gupta recieved the Ashoka Fellowship in 2004.
- The campaign won the World Bank's Global Development Marketplace Award and Changemaker's Innovation Award in 2009.
- Today, as Goonj, the Delhi-based NGO works across 21 states and has dealt with 1000 tonnes of used material such as discareded clothes and goods to turn them into resources. The NGO deals with 70,000 kg of material every month.
- Forbes called Gupta one of India's most powerful rural entrepreneurs in 2012 while NASA named Goonj a "Game Changing Innovation" in 2012. In the same year Schwab Foundation named Gupta India’s Social Entrepreneur of the Year.
- According to an interview in Business Standard, Goonj was one of the first organisations to respond to the flash floods in Uttarakhand in 2013. The organisation was also involved in providing relief supplies for the Jammu and Kashmir floods of 2014.
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Also read: All you need to know about whistleblower and Magsaysay award winner Sanjeev Chaturvedi
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