How to change lives with ‘raddi’
Can old newspapers, used clothes, metal cans and plastic containers change lives? Turns out, they can. Ask MESCO - Modern Educational Social and Cultural Organisation. This charitable organisation has provided educational aid to 4,162 underprivileged school and college students in 2018-19 by collecting these scrap and using the funds generated from their sale for educational aid.
In 1968, three junior college students of National College,
Bandra - Azhar Ali Qureishi, Abbas Khatkhatay and Saeed Ahmed Vohra came together to help other underprivileged students when they saw that many of their classmates could not afford to pay fees or buy books.
Initially, they sold ice cream and greeting cards to raise funds. It was a wellwisher who suggested the young men to collect old newspapers and sell them to raise funds, as this way the funds would come in regularly.
In the first year, they had managed to get just Rs 250 from collecting and selling old newspapers. Today, the NGO’s newspaper collection unit has over 3,200 donors across the city, its suburbs, Thane and Navi Mumbai. Money generated from selling these is used to provide books to school and college students.
The NGO makes the best use of scrap they receive. Even used toys are collected and kept in nurseries that the organisation runs. Scrap such as wedding cards are used by teachers in these schools to make teaching-aid material and craft, games and puzzles.
The organisation’s newspaper collection teams had collected over 1,80,000 kg of old newspapers last year. By collecting over 41,000 kg of used clothes and other recyclable scrap, the organisation generated over Rs 7.5 lakh. People can also donate academic and pleasure-reading books, which the NGO keeps in the library of a school it runs in Mahim.
By newspaper collection, the organization generates Rs 30 lakh annually, but of that, says its General Secretary Prof. Makba Farhaan, that it manages to get a net profit of only Rs 5 lakh on account of the operation cost of the collection vans and staff salaries.