The Maalaga Social Foundation drive of Collection of Used clothes and redistribution to the poor and needy allows us to satisfy many objectives. It help to ensure our greater objective of moving Mumbai towards ‘ZERO WASTE’. It’s based on the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle). What has been an additional source of encouragement for the foundation has been the active involvement of Sr. school children & youth in the city of Mumbai joining this initiative to get sensitized to the living conditions of the poor and marginalized poor living in the streets & slum areas of Mumbai. This initiative gives these young adults a life times experience that allows them to become wonderful human beings with kindness and compassion.
The Collection
The first key process to its success is to identify reasonably affluent societies and residential townships in Mumbai and seek permission to keep our used clothes collection boxes followed with a good digital and off line awareness campaign of our used clothes collection drive.
The Message
It does not matter how much anyone donate, what matters most is the feeling of helping the needy people and creating an awareness of compassion can sensitivity. Donation may be small but if it makes poor one happy it’s more than any riches of the world.
Our sorting team works methodically to keep used CLOTHING in the production cycle by making an appropriate selection according to different criteria: types of textiles, types of clothes ( winter wear), targeted segments based on customs and traditions of rural areas, clothing styles, all habits, and legal and technical requirements.
We work with passion because as all our staff and volunteers are here for a cause of goodness and sharing the love of giving. When it comes to differentiating grades and quality, our team is able to artistically sort the latest trends and an eagle eye to differentiate between qualities, grades, and clothing requirements.
Transportation & logistics:
Our Transportation & logistics department helps with coordinating with the management staff of societies and townships where our collection boxes are kept so that information is passed on to our logistics team when the boxes are filled up and ready for collection. We maintain a good relationship between the management staff of societies and townships. Our professional and transparent communication ensure our used clothes collection drives are very well promoted within each society and townships.
Pre-sorting Used clothes:
In the first part, we start with the opening of large collection boxes & bags. Then we clean the goods by removing all kinds of waste fractions like wet textile, torn clothes, faded clothes, rubbish, as well as other non-wearable and non-reusable items.
Meanwhile, the sorting step is done by hand and carefully; to distinguish them by types such as Sareers, women’s wear, traditional clothes, trousers, linens, jackets, and sweatshirts, baby clothes.
Sorting:
In the second part, as soon as the pre-sorting is finalized, the reusable items are sorted by our qualified team into different sub-categories, by gender and by season. This step is done by the choices and grades already defined by our development team based on the location needs like Rural areas and Mumbai city. We have different products categories, presented as follows:
Super Grade = the highest quality second-hand clothes with no defects and meet top fashion standards.
Grade 1 = very good quality used clothing wearable but not necessarily latest fashion.
Grade 2 = old clothing, wearable with a few defects that indicate they are second-hand goods.
Grade 3 = second-hand clothes that are not in perfect condition and have defects.
Folding the garments:
In the last part of this process, our quality control team folds the garments and closely checks each Box to ensure that all qualities and items for distribution meet our standards. Finally, our product is ready for packaging!
Placing clothes into paper covers:
After folding the garments our teams places a few assorted clothes into environmental friendly paper covers for specific target location and people living in those location.
Packaging
Packaging is a very important step when it comes to storage, distribution, and loading. Based on our community requirements to meet their needs of our various beneficiaries and align with their needs. All our packaging is labeled with stickers displaying the Item name, quantity, and batch number. This helps our distribution and transportation teams to quickly identify what to load based of the distribution requirements in the streets & slum areas of Mumbai or to the rural villages.
We have different types of packaging such as:
Bales of Cardboard boxes of 10 kg;
Bales of Cardboard boxes of 20 kg;
Large Bales of Cardboard boxes 30, 35, and 40 KG;
Distribution
The objective behind old clothes & blankets distribution is to provide the old clothes and blankets to the needy by distributing them on streets, slum areas and villages of western India whom we have adopted for social & economic empowerment.
To DONATE to this cause:
Account Name: MAALAGA SOCIAL FOUNDATION
Account No: 5145054505
CRN No: 451047432
IFSC Code: KKBK0000663
Kotak Mahindra Bank
Branch Name & Code: Powai-0663
