KOCHI: What is an example of an idea which stemmed from another initiative? Answer: The swap shop set up by the National Service Scheme (NSS) unit of the East Marady Government Vocational Higher Secondary School which allows people from financially-backward families to choose from a collection of donated clothes.
It all started when the NSS unit, in association with the gram panchayat and Muvattupuzha Red Cross, launched a project called ‘Clothes’. NSS programme officer Sameer Siddiqui said the students of the school were asked to bring unused but damage-free clothes from their homes.
“We had originally planned to distribute the clothes among flood victims. But that didn’t materialise,” he said. The NSS unit then decided to hand over the clothes to the Red Cross. “The kids were very enthusiastic and collected over 1,000 pieces within a day,” he said. The clothes were in very good condition, he said. That was when some of the students, especially those from families which were not financially sound, approached the authorities seeking to pick up some of the donated clothes which they found to be in a better condition.
“We readily handed over the clothes they wanted. It was heartening to see their happiness. However, this incident right in our school prompted us to think of setting up the ‘swap shop’,” said Sameer.
He said the swap shop will be set up under the ‘Freedom from waste’ project of the Haritha Keralam mission. “People from financially weak background can come in and collect the clothing,” he said.
Sameer said Keralites’ aversion to anything used was a big hurdle.
“The Red Cross said the clothes we donated will be distributed among the poor outside the state. They said people of Kerala could not imagine wearing anything that has been used by another person,” said Sameer. “We had faced the same difficulty when we started our project of making bags out of old clothes.
The students wouldn’t take home the bags made using somebody else’s clothes. So we began writing the names of the students on the clothes they donated, made the bags out of them and handed them over to the students,” Sameer said.