Empowerment for every gully

It takes one person’s vision and commitment to truly bring transformation at the grassroots level. Ghatkopar resident Abdul Munaf is one such young man who started Gully Classes Foundation (GCF), to provide primary education to underprivileged children.  

The NGO’s mission is to empower children with education, women with skills, and protect the environment through clean-up drives and awareness.

Over time, he realised that the problems in marginalised communities are multi-pronged, and the inability to earn enough to sustain themselves has been the biggest challenge. “All these years, women who were looking to earn some money to help at home would find odd jobs that would pay just Rs 70 to Rs 80 after working for eight hours. But they would still do it thinking that at least it will enable them to pay for a litre of milk for their kids,” shares Abdul. To address this, he expanded his work. 

“We have been teaching women how to apply mehendi so that they can take up independent assignments, as this is a skill that always brings good money. We identified women who really enjoy cooking food and registered them on Zomato and Swiggy and helped them create food menus,” explains the founder. Women from these communities, despite not being literate, now successfully operate cloud kitchens, making them financially independent.  

Taking advantage of festive demands for products, Abdul, during Diwali, started a project of diya-making and colouring the diyas for the festive sale. “We had a lot of plain diyas and we gave them away to women who were good at painting and told them to pay us just the minimum cost of the diyas that too, only if they were sold,” he shares. Abdul explains that a lot of them want to do this but usually don’t have the money to buy plain diyas in bulk fearing loss, in case they are not sold. He collaborated with a few colleges where the women were allowed to set up stalls and sell their products.

“From next month, we are going to provide computer skill training for people where they can learn basic computer skills, Tally, web development and more. This will help people to find jobs in offices,” he says.