How do you manage to unite the two extreme ends of society?

by THE OLBIOS TEAM

an idea on material transfer

THE OLBIOS TEAM

A small village school’s needs in India are very basic. Normally, students don’t even have a pencil to write with, while a bag, school uniform, mats for sitting etc. are distant dreams. Scores of children leave schools for reasons like lack of a water bottle or inability of parents to pay the recurring expense of a note book. The organization GOONJ’s “School to School” (S2S) initiative is addressing the educational needs of thousands of remote and resource starved schools by transferring under-utilized material from affluent urban schools. Materials include clothes, furniture, and electronic equipment. GOONJ collects and delivers 1,000 tons of material every year through an extensive network of 500 volunteers and 250 partners across 21 states of India. It also supports village and slum communities in infrastructure/local development projects. Communities have built huge bamboo bridges, dug up wells, developed small irrigation canals, built drainage systems, built village schools, repaired roads, and developed water harvesting systems to clean up bodies of water. GOONJ is using material from the cities as an entry point into people’s lives. GOONJ wants to prove that under utilized cloth & other old material can be powerful tools for social change. Web site: http://goonj.org/ An amazing series of videos of children going to very different kind of schools