July Updates 2025
Gram Swabhimaan
Continuing the Gram Swabhimaan journey, the past two months have enabled us to deepen our engagement. Along with our team, we reached out to 81 villages across Odisha, Rajasthan, Bihar, and Maharashtra. However, due to the intense summer heatwaves followed by unseasonal rains, our outreach was slightly limited during this period. Despite these challenges, the conversations continued, keeping the spirit of Gram Swabhimaan alive on the ground.
We are also connecting with Artist Groups who regularly travel from village to village. Through their storytelling, music, and performances, they can bring the Gram Swabhimaan initiative to life in local languages and cultural expressions. This approach will help spread the message in a deeper, more relatable, and engaging way across communities.
Here are some of the powerful thoughts shared during these meetings:
- Hume is baat ka ehsas hua ki ham khud ki bhasha badlenge toh bahot kuch badal sakta hai.
- Hamari parampara hamari pahchan hai. jo ham bhulte ja rahe hai. aaj pata chala ki wah kyu jaroori hai.
- Hamare pas jo hai woh kitne saare logo ke pas nahi hai. yah bhi hamko yaad rakhna chahiye.
- Me kabhi socha nehi tha gareeb ke bare, sab log gareeb bole me bi bal diya.
This time, our focus has been on Gram Swabhimaan Sarathi—volunteers from within the community who are actively taking the concept to more villages through regular conversations and local engagement. Activating and strengthening these local Sarathi is a sustainable approach, as it builds ownership and ensures the idea is rooted within the community itself. To support their efforts, we provided T-shirts and cloth bags printed with the Gram Swabhimaan identity, making them easily recognisable and helping reinforce the message wherever they go. We also held follow-up meetings with the Sarathis to deepen their understanding and align efforts. Currently, we have 66 Gram Swabhimaan Sarathi who are playing a key role in carrying forward the message of Gram Swabhimaan
Taking this forward, we also held a Gram Swabhimaan session with our team members working at the Goonj Centres of Circularity (GCOC). All these members come from rural India and are engaged in various responsibilities at Goonj—sorting, kit-making, production, and more. The session took place during Manthan 2025, our annual team gathering held in Dehradun on 8th and 9th June, where members from Rishikesh and Delhi came together for a meaningful experience filled with cross-learning and celebration.
Over 250+ team members took the Gram Swabhimaan pledge during this meet. What followed was deeply heartening—many didis and bhaiyas from GCOC began reflecting on how we use the word “gareeb” (poor). Some shared how they once saw themselves through that lens, saying, “Main khud ko gareeb maanta tha, par aaj lagta hai ki main gareeb nahi hoon.”
Since the session, we’ve observed small but powerful changes—people are consciously choosing not to use the word “gareeb” in conversations, correcting themselves mid-sentence. It was a beautiful reminder of how dignity begins with language, and how the spirit of Gram Swabhimaan is taking root in everyday thought and expression.
Field Updates
In Jolar village, Dhamotar block (Pratapgarh, Rajasthan), 100+ villagers united to repair a check dam and build soak pits for water conservation. As recognition for their effort.

In Ramharipur village, Mayurbhanj district, Odisha over 30 community members came together to build a shared space for meetings and gatherings, addressing a long-standing need.

Kangavai, Ratnagiri, Maharshtra community repairs its checkdam – solving water issues on their own.
Manthan 2025
Manthan is a space for strategic thinking, capacity building, and perspective sharing. We believe disruptive ideas are essential to break old patterns and open up bold, new possibilities for lasting change. With this spirit, we’re organizing physical meets to bring together diverse stakeholders for meaningful conversations. Deeply rooted in Goonj’s values, ‘Manthan’ reflects our commitment to listening, co-creating, and nurturing changemaking from the ground up. It’s not a new direction, but an organic extension of the introspection and dialogue that have always shaped our journey. It is a space where everyone can freely share their thoughts, ideas, concerns, and challenges with dignity and mutual respect. Manthan is not just a platform; it is a shared journey of reflection and collective action.
Recently, under the ‘Manthan’, we organized two engaging gatherings—one with team members from GCOC (Goonj Centers of Circularity) and another with the Operations team of Goonj. Both meetings were held at the UPES campus in Dehradun in June.
With GCOC members it was a two-day gathering on 9th& 10th June 2025, of 250+ team members from our Rishikesh and Delhi centers. Goonj currently has 8 such centers across India, and this was the first time that members from these two locations came together in this way. These centers are the heart of Goonj’s material work, where teams are involved in sorting, repairing, repurposing, and innovating with urban surplus to create products and systems that serve both rural and urban needs.
The two days were filled with rich conversations, meaningful reflections, and shared ideas on how to build greater synergy in our everyday work. Team members not only brainstormed ways to strengthen impact but also engaged in bonding activities, laughter, and informal exchanges, turning the space into one of learning, friendship, and joy.
With the Operations team:
From June 10th to 14th, around 140 team members from Goonj’s operations teams came together for an intensive four-day meeting. The gathering served as a space to reflect on where Goonj stands today, through honest conversations, acknowledgment of achievements, and an open sharing of challenges and failures.
The meetings were thoughtfully designed to look ahead while staying rooted in present realities. Sessions explored critical questions around strategy, team well-being, and organizational direction. Importantly, failures were not brushed aside but brought into the room as vital learnings, helping everyone see them as stepping stones in the journey.
Senior team members, some of whom have been with Goonj for over a decade, shared personal stories from their long journeys. Their reflections sparked inspiration and helped reinforce the values that bind Goonj together—commitment, courage, and collective spirit.
Group discussions and strategic conversations encouraged collaboration and honest dialogue, breaking silos and fostering a sense of unity across geographies and roles. What emerged from these four days was not just plans or ideas, but a renewed sense of shared purpose. It reminded everyone that Goonj is not just about the work—it’s about the people and the values we carry forward together.
Fellowship Update
Setu Fellowship and Next-Generation fellowship:
Fellows are engaged in their chapter’s assigned tasks and the fellowship monthly tasks assigned by the fellowship team. Apart from this, the fellows are done with their rural immersion visit and consolidation. We are able to see the impact of rural immersion through their expression, experience, reflection, and action. One of our fellows also led an external session regarding the outreach for the next cohort of Setu Fellowship 2025-26. As a team we are really satisfied to see the behavioral changes after this rural immersion. It was a journey in which they critically reflect on their notion, perception, belief, bias, and self reality because of a completely different set-up of their imagination of society, community, and people.
As an organization, we are offering large scale internships and in the last two months, we have dealt with more than 100 interns. Most of our fellows had played a vital role in managing their daily engagements and played the role of mentors for our interns.
We are done with our Setu Fellowship applications for the upcoming cohort (2025-26). Now, we are in the process of screening and shortlisting the applications. We have decided to onboard our upcoming cohort by the first of August.
We are having our internal processes to launch the new cohort of our Next - Generation (an internal fellowship).
Our fellows are always alert in engaging with various urban stakeholders for creating impacts which go beyond solving problems. Through their engagement with various schools, colleges, RWA’s and corporates they are sharing their ideas, bringing in more stakeholders and also widening the opportunities for collaboration. Their engagement through various sessions and activities ignites a thought for mindfulness and also seeks out innovation so that our initiatives won’t be just a source for the urban population to reduce their burden of excess resources, rather to join hands for seeing the bigger picture and bring about changes in the world through sustainable actions.
Grassroots Fellowship
Our grassroots fellows are working closely with our field team and learning about the implementation for the larger cause. They have joined five months before and now we are planning a physical meeting with them and we will be having a review call with them in two days.
Grassroot fellows are a part of the field activities where our initiatives are implemented and the real impact can be seen. Being in the field, our fellows are bringing real time impact in the lives of the rural population, by understanding the local community and the issues they face in their daily lives.
Picture no.1
A picture from Ranchi, Jharkhand. Our Grassroot fellow interacting with the women of the community.
Picture no.2
A picture from Gajapati, Odisha. Our Grassroot fellow is facilitating a Chuppi Todo Baithak (CTB) session participated by both men and women of a community.