Project SMIRA
It’s a rainy Sunday morning. I am discarding my old clothes and I see our house caretaker’s daughter Saloni, behind me, holding my skirt and getting lost in the mirror imagining herself dressed in it. “Keep that down” her mom shouted and Saloni’s vivid experience became a dream. I immediately decided to give my skirt to her and that day. I became responsible for that family and a new relationship was formed.
I shared this with my colleague Naomi. We wondered: “If giving away a few old clothes can make such an enormous difference in someone’s life, then why won’t more old clothes make more difference in more lives !”
We conducted multiple surveys and discovered that lack of appropriate clothing is causing a high amount of fungal and bacterial diseases, leading to a large number of casualties globally. The situation in India is even worse. Families don’t have access to minimal clothes. As a result, children usually roam naked and unprotected in a few parts of the country. We discovered the problem is not lack of clothing, but access to those clothes.
This led to the birth of Smira, a project where we collect clothes that have outgrown their usefulness and hand them over to the needy, promoting sustainability. At Smira, we stand for adding value to each and every volunteer, while spreading awareness of our project online & offline. This initiative was started on Indian Independence Day, 15th August 2021. After three months of smooth flow, we started facing multifarious challenges within the team due to inefficiency which was affecting our expansion plans in other cities.
At that moment, I came across Global Changemakers’ Mentorship Program and got enrolled after getting inspired by the mentors and their massive contribution towards humanity and sustainability. I was mentored by Shawntel Neito and, with the support of Kathia Salazar, Sara Botero & Yasmin Morais, I was able to strengthen my leadership, teamwork & communication skills on a global level. I am also grateful to have won the Full Scholarship from GCM to pursue the program. It gave me access to the right tools needed to cause a breakthrough story after which we have touched 23 thousand lives and stand for touching 1 million lives by 31 December 2022.
We have donations coming from schools, societies, small scale businesses & factories, different towns and cities across India. We provide these donations to the needy in orphanages, NGOs, welfare organizations, care centers focused on AIDS, cancer, mental health, etc. We have a baseline of compassion in everything we do. For instance, there’s this orphanage for AIDS affected kids in Pune, India, where we have been going for several weeks. A lot of young people who happen to go there are passionate about sports. While giving away the clothes, they’ve been having animated discussions with kids over fitness, Olympics, different trekking points and a lot more. So, with protection and warmth, we also share our knowledge and smiles by connecting with them emotionally.
One out of ten people on this globe live without proper clothing. Smira’s purpose is to transform that significantly. Smira’s story is a wake up call for us that with multiple educational degrees, networks and resources, comes the responsibility to give back to the world.
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