•Orissa Cyclone
•Gujarat earthquake (in rehabilitation also)
•Gujarat riots
•Andhra floods
•Initiated RAHAT-FLOODS an annual campaign of GOONJ.. to provide support to the victims of Assam, Bihar and west Bengal where floods are like an annual ritual and despite heavy losses the country never treat this as a disaster.

On 26th December, 2004 when Tsunami hit across South Asia, looking at the first pictures of the devastation on the television we realized the immense scale of relief material which would be needed to deal with the aftermath of this disaster. On the same day GOONJ.. was probably the first to send out an appeal for material and help to patrons, volunteers, corporates, and schools in Delhi and around the country. Goonj simultaneously activated its established partner NGO network in South India. Through them we got a quick assessment of the affected areas and the kind of material required by the people.

Our volunteer S.S. Venkateswaran who survived in this disaster while holidaying in Kerala, immediately rushed to Kanyakumari to assess the situation and identify the organisations working in the remotest parts of the state apart from providing his services as a relief worker.

First Phase

The first phase challenge was organization and scaling up. Given our limited resources I am happy with what we achieved. A core team planning, handling and coordinating the expanding work, lots of volunteers – assigned to different tasks, handling a whole new range of activities. A number of awareness and collection camps and clear strategy on what is to be collected, where and how to be dispatched and distributed, helped us in saving a lot of time and wastage in sending unwanted material.

The biggest task for GOONJ.. was to look for reliable grass root organizations to reach the remotest parts of the affected areas. We clearly understood that instead of doing everything on our own and limiting ourselves to couple of thousands only it’s better to build up a network of people and spread the work. This strategy really worked well. At many places the material reached much faster than many government agencies.

Some key points

•First major dispatch of sorted/new items including essential medicines, clothing and other relief material was dispatched within a week of the Tsunami, from Delhi & Goa, to two organizations in Tamil Nadu.

•Right from the beginning only the required clothing like sarees, bed sheets etc. are being sent to these areas and rest of the clothing we started diverting to other places as a part of our nationwide movement VASTRADAAN. The main stress was on Eatables, medicines, stoves, blankets, utensils, torches instead of just collecting clothes.

•In a span of a few days about 75 collection centers were operational round the clock in Delhi, Mumbai and few other cities with the help of volunteers, organisations and well wishers. It helped people to reach us immediately at their convenience.

•A large force of volunteers spent long hours in sorting and packing of material. In Mumbai over 120 students from MD college helped us.

•CAF India supported our efforts by giving financial support to RAHAT- TSUNAMI

•Safexpress, a well known cargo company joined hands with us not only in local pick up of material from Delhi, Mumbai & other cities but also in transporting the relief material to the affected remote villages of south India free of charge.

•A lot of prestigious organizations/ corporates joined hands to motivate people and collect the required material. Many schools, IIT Delhi,B.R.A., CAF, Oxfam, IAMR and other institutions also pooled in by organizing successful collection camps.

•In a very short span of time, with a nationwide awareness, a number of corporate houses like American Express, AVIVA, BILT, Birlasoft, Conexant, Citi Bank, HCL,HEWITT, VERTEX, IOC, Mothersons sumi, Wipro, Siemens, Star TV, TCS etc. organised camps and sent us material for Tsunami victims and also helped in spreading awareness across their corporate network.

•Air India organised a collection drive in its residential area & ICICI, Mumbai organised a newspaper collection drive to raise money for GOONJ’s efforts.

•A number of individuals supported our efforts by giving monetary contributions including some employees of Scotia finance, Delhi & Intersolutions Noida.

•A series of camps in metros & NCR region -Gurgaon, Noida, Faridabad & Delhi were organised. The collection camp organised at Sector 18 market and Sector-26 NOIDA created a history of sorts, where we not only collected two and a half truck load of material in a few hours, but succeeded in motivating lots of people to join us in sorting out the material on the spot.

•In Mumbai well known organization Akanksha Foundation joined hands with GOONJ.. and Voltas house at Chinchpokhli & Sriniwas house at Fort worked as main collection and sorting points.

•IIT Chennai offered us about 3000 square ft. of covered space in the campus and the entire force of NSS volunteers to manage material there. We are using this space as our main centre in Chennai where we are storing material like Biscuits, soaps, utensils and dry ration and are sending out to local organizations in a phased manner.

•Prestigious schools like DAV School, Faridabad(Haryana), Springdales, Pusa Road in Delhi also participated in this campaign and send across a lot of relief material.

•All the branches of Delhi based St. Marks Sr. Sec School contributed a full truck load of dry ration to RAHAT- TSUNAMI.

•Some other significant corporate contributions- A large quantity of biscuits and medicines from GSK through CAF India and new T shirts & other clothing from Raymonds.

Due to the sheer numbers involved and space constraint we are not able to list out individual contributions in terms of time, effort, money and relief material but we would like to take this opportunity to thank each and everyone who placed their faith in us for reaching relief to the Tsunami effected people.