Anshu Gupta- Goonj: Spearheading Social, Economic, and Environmental Impact in an Innovative, Sustainable, and Replicable Way

Anshu was born in Meerut in north India. His father was with the Military Engineering Services of the Indian armed forces. When he was 17, Anshu met with a road accident in which he sustained multiple fractures. Bedridden, he started writing articles for the local newspapers. Seeing his interest in writing, his father encouraged him to take up journalism. While studying, in 1991, Anshu went to Uttar Kashi , devastated by an earthquake. There he found that though relief work was being done, it was being done without any sensitivity. He found that relief trucks were dumping bundles of clothes, but people from the region were not taking them, as they felt it would be a loss of dignity for them to do so. Instead, they preferred to use potato sacks to protect themselves from the cold. That was when he realized that giving charity without any regard for the dignity of the receiver amounted to insulting the person..