Be a Samaritan for the Capital’s homeless: Lend a helping hand for the destitute by donating your woollen clothes, this winter
Lend a helping hand for the destitute by donating your woollen clothes, this winter
The coldest days of the year are here, and to say that Delhi’s December winter chill is harsh is an understatement. The dipping temperatures in the Capital become a survival issue for the homeless, and if you want to extend your hand of help to help, there’s what you can do. Donate warm clothes to them as these city NGOs organise campaigns to help the needy.
FOR THE HOMELESS
Delhi-based NGO Uday Foundation believes that giving warm clothes to the needy is the best gift during winter. Lakhs of homeless experience the cold and are at a risk of falling ill. The rise in air pollution, and the early onset of winter this year has given them the opportunity to donate blankets.Asking people to be part of the mission, Rahul Verma, founder, says, “Every winter we run a blanket and warm clothes donation campaign, where we provide high quality blankets along with dry ration and dignity kits to the underprivileged. We reach out to people of DelhiNCR.” Contact the collection centre at: 011-26561333/444.
COLLECT WOOLLENS
The temperature in the outskirts of Delhi is always lower than the city. In these areas, rural women need saris and woollens. Meenakshi Gupta, co-founder of Goonj, says that they collect donation and distribute it to remote areas. “In our campaign Odha Do Zindagi we focus on getting saris and woollens. We even end up buying them. This winter is going to be tough for people who are coming out of disaster zones.We often get winter wear from urban residents, but struggle to procure saris,” says Gupta. Contact them at: 011-26561333.
SPREADING CHEER
As part of a programme called caring community for restoring broken lives, which started in 1999, the NGO Asha Bhawan has been sending old volunteers from door to door, to accept old clothes. “When people come to know about our work from our website, they call us to collect,” says the director, Ashwani Dutta.The NGO collects clothes and then divides them among men and women. “When oversized clothes are left, they are used by those who are rehabilitated. We send them to charity shops and before sending, we repair them,”says Dutta. The NGO has centres in Govindpuri, Janakpuri and Gurugram. Contact them at: 9250928910/11 and 9958012491.
FOR A NIGHT’S SLEEP
There is no better medicine that a good night sleep as you snug in your blanket. But, a blanket isn’t enough to combat the cold when you are sleeping under the open sky. So, for the homeless, some Delhiites have been providing sleeping bags. For instance Project Sleep Well. Sunil Kumar Aledia, activist for the rights of homeless at Centre for Holistic Development (CHD), an NGO in south Delhi runs this project. “We started this project in 2015 when we realised that the homeless often get blankets as donations, but these blankets aren’t sufficient to keep them warm in winters. In comparison, the sleeping bags insulate the body heat and are even easy to carry. Therefore, we started raising money through crowd funding to buy and distribute sleeping bags to the homeless of the Delhi-NCR region. We even facilitate if people want to directly buy and donate sleeping bags,” he says. Donate a sleeping bag to a homeless by calling at: 01141084099/9811327037