Helping Old Clothes Find New Owners this Winter: A Social Initiative by Penthara

At Penthara Technologies, we strive to manifest our values into actions every day. We believe that our success should benefit the local communities we operate in. Taking a step towards the path of driving positive change by giving back to the society, this December we organized our very first cloth donation drive: Mission Do Garmi.

Still working remotely at the time, our team got on a call to discuss and find a meaningful way to give back to the society. A few minutes in, we had a winner.

For those who don’t stay in Northern India, people here face harsh winters which generally begin a fortnight before Christmas. Many people residing in slums who don’t have enough warm clothes have it the worst.

A cloth donation drive where people can donate warm clothes they no longer need to the needy seemed to be the fittest solution to spread some warmth and love right before the holiday season. That’s how Mission Do Garmi was born. The name basically means “A Mission to Give Warmth”.

To undertake a big mission like this, we knew we couldn’t do this alone. With a humble ask and quick show of hands, we had volunteers from our team across India, ready to contribute to the cause. The journey began and the roadmap pretty much looked like this -

• Getting the word out: First and foremost was to raise awareness about the donation drive and its details by promoting social media platforms, distributing flyers and reaching out to friends and family.
• Procuring Collections: For collections, we wanted to procure the clothes without worrying our donors about the logistics of it. We achieved this in two ways:
  • Going Door to Door: Our volunteers went door-to-door to homes in the vicinity of their residence to collect warm clothes from people who wanted to donate to our cause.
  • Organizing Camps in Societies: On receiving permission, we also set up camps in multiple societies in the districts of Mohali and Panchkula for a convenient donation experience.
• Categorizing and Organizing the Clothes: After finishing the collection, the clothes were checked for their quality. Only those clothes which were in good condition were deemed fit for donation. Thereafter, the clothes were categorized according to age, size and gender so that the receiver is given their perfect fit. Once categorized, each piece of garment was packed carefully in a bio-degradable plastic bag so as to keep it intact and ready to donate.

With everything packed and ready to go, all that was left to do was to bring this mission to fruition. We picked the first week of December for running the donation drive so that people could receive warm clothes before the harsh winters strike.

On 5th December 2021, our volunteer team in Punjab went shelter-to-shelter to distribute our collections among two slums in sector 4 and sector 14 of the Panchkula district. The clothes that had found their way here from the generous donors in four cities across India, namely Panchkula, Mohali, Lucknow and Mumbai, had now found new owners to keep warm this winter. It was an eventful day. We went home with our hearts 300 smiles richer and our faces beaming with happiness.

Mission Do Garmi 2021 was a mission for people fueled by the support of volunteers, donors and well-wishers. We believe their efforts and contributions deserve a space of their own in our hearts and this blog as well.

• Our Volunteers: Akkhil Ohri, Jasjit Chopra, Nidhi Pandey, Simran Chopra, Sarvdeep Kaur, Sanika Sanaye, Tanya Garg and Vatsala Kishore.
• Kind Donors: Meenakshi Kakkar, Shabana Khan, Shashi Khatawlia, Saumia Nair, Pooja Bale, Subramanya Kudva, Ravi Gajera and the list goes on.

We are grateful for everyone involved in making our very first cloth donation drive a success. Giving is receiving and we are already on the hunt for yet another way to give back to the community. Stay tuned for the updates.

We are always looking for more hands to help us realize our mission of doing good in this world. If you are interested in joining us in our future social impact activities, we’d love to hear from you. Write to us at wecare@penthara.com and we’ll be sure to reach out as soon as we can.