A generous donation from each item sold will be going towards helping children ragpickers and their families in India.
Each donation amount varies and is specified on each product page.
"A ragpicker or chiffonnier, was a 19th and early 20th century term for someone who makes a living by rummaging through refuse to collect material for salvage," as defined by Wikipedia.
Today in India, Ragpicking is still widespread and offers the less fortunate in society an honest yet meagre hand to mouth source of income. Unfortunately the majority of these ragpickers also involve and rely on their children in this role as they are often too poor to send them to school on a regular basis. They scour refuse in search of recyclable items that can be sold on to scrap merchants. Ragpickers are mostly women living in unauthorised slums in the poorest of areas many of which are migrant, who have fled their city or village due to terrible living conditions.
Most children begin working as ragpickers at the tender age of 5 to 6 years, many of which have never attended school or have any formal education. It tends to be the case that the families need their children to work and are reliant upon this income. Traditionally girls were more inclined to be ragpickers, however due to recent changes in trends it is now more common for boys to be involved in the trade. Adolescent girls are less involved as it is said to be unsafe for them to be out on the streets. They are more involved in household chores and helping sort out the recyclable goods once it has reached the home.
Often enough ragpicking will interfere with the childs education and cause harm to their physical, social and emotional well being. There is a very high risk of infectious disease amongst ragpickers due to exposure to hazardous materials. The risk of physical injury is also extremely common as they frequently have no shoes, let alone safety equipment or devices to move/lift heavy objects. This means that hand and back injuries are inevitable as well as the risk of being caught in surface substance, trash slides or fires. Also there can be widespread public scorn against ragpickers and their families due to their status, poverty and perceived lack of hygiene which is terribly humiliating and demeaning.
I aim to help families involved in ragpicking in India improve their general living conditions and their daily lives. Fabric or monatary donations would be much appreciated, please contact me on sales@suneeta.co.uk for further details.
Photographs on this page are courtesy of Kajal Nisha Patel. To see more of her wonderful work please visit her website via the link below.
