Social Entrepreneurs today, play a very essential role in building our nation. Though, they may produce only small changes in the short term, they reverberate to catalyze large changes in the longer term. Infact, they are the ones who no longer sit passively, looking at the extreme situations of poverty or cancerous global warming or undone human justice….the list could go on and on. Let’s take a look at 3 upcoming social entrepreneurship initiatives which have taken up India’s pressing issues- Need for clean water, Providing clothes for those affected by poverty and Effective Waste Management.
Waterlife- Sudesh Menon, Mohan Ranbaore and Indranil Das
Waterlife ensures safe and clean drinking water for communities in areas with high water contamination. It’s estimated that 65% of India’s rural population and 35% of those living in urban areas do not have access to clean drinking water. The river Ganges has the highest water depletion rate globally. Sadly, over extraction and populist policies like free power and inefficient irrigation practices have aggravated the problem. India is already a water stressed country and it’s predicted that by 2030, there will be a 50% gap between demand for water and the availability of fresh water because of droughts in various parts of the country. Waterlife proclaims to be a ‘business with a soul’, thus, Waterlife embarked on a public-private-partnership model which where the three men persuaded state governments to let them maintain the water purification plants the states were setting up, charging a user fee from customers for doing so. Currently, Waterlife runs 2,000 such plants of all sizes. The company is said to be growing at nearly 300 per cent per year.
Goonj- Anshu Gupta
Goonj collects, sorts, repurposes and redistributes cloth to the rural and urban poor. It works with village and slum communities to meet their needs of clothing and other necessities. The culture of recycling has been here for generations, yet the giving of surplus cloth and other materials has always been about discarding/donating what you have rather than giving what people need. Goonj has successfully changed this thinking and have made recycling large scale, dealing with more than 3000 tons of urban material annually. They have also repositioned urban surplus material from the old concept of charity to a powerful development resource. The material empowers rural communities through collective participation; their work has not only become a big people’s movement, but is also creating a parallel economy where old re-usable material becomes a valuable resource. It’s not cash based but trash based. Infact, Goonj has an interesting sub initiative, NJPC (Not Just a Piece of cloth)- a sanitary napkin making program. It looks at the whole issue of menstrual hygiene management for millions of women in the most far flung villages or city slums. Women make-up 72% of India’s rural population, yet are forgotten. They face challenges every month when their periods arrive – access to affordable sanitary towels and awareness, so they took up the task of turning more than 100 trucks of this material into much needed cloth pads. Now, more than a decade later, ‘MY Pads’ reach women across the country, where they are probably the cheapest, reusable, easy to make and eco-friendly sanitary pads. Women now have a clean piece of cloth, which saves them from infections and indignity.
Daily Dump- Poonam Bir Kasturi
Daily Dump manages India’s urban home waste right where it is generated – within the family home by cleverly fusing design, traditional pottery with the science of composting to develop more than 50 aesthetic products and services, enabling urban Indians to compost their waste and be part of the solution to the country’s huge trash problem. Kasturi wanted ordinary Indians to feel empowered to make a difference to the waste surrounding them. Your home waste is 50 – 70 % organic, so keeping this off the streets can reduce the mess on the streets by 60%, that’s a big impact! Daily Dump is designed for a single family as the “customer”. It is supported by a service backup and customer support. It actually helps families convert their wet waste into eco-friendly compost. The knowledge base is open-source to encourage micro-enterprises.
SVADHITA 