At 9 a.m. two women helpers working in YMCA Special School for the Mentally Challenged in Ellis Nagar had just finished segregating and neatly arranging children’s, women’s and men’s clothes on hangars and hanging them on the rods fixed to the outer front wall of the school compound. Within minutes, people gathered from nowhere and 90 per cent of the clothes were taken away. No questions were asked and the empty rods were soon filled with fresh set of donated clothes.
Watching from a distance, the president of Rotary Club of Madurai NEXTgen, Amar Vora was all smiles. “The wall of kindness does not divide,” he says, “but brings people closer to each other through small and wonderful acts of assistance and goodwill.”
The idea was suggested by Preetha Vignesh, wife of a fellow Rotarian, who borrowed it from a WhatsApp forward. With “Making a Difference” as this year’s Rotary theme, the club members got down to inspiring benevolence among Madurai residents. The YMCA Special School struck as a good option for two reasons. The club was already collaborating with the school on other projects and a wall of kindness there would get more beneficiaries with homeless and people below poverty line living in nearby areas.
Once the 15-feet long wall was identified for the purpose, painted by artist Kumaran and inaugurated by past district governor Rotarian Sam Babu on August 30, there was a surge in people leaving clothes, informs the school principal Shamila Dorris, who assigned two of her staff to sort and arrange the clothes on the wall outside. She says the clothes are brought inside only if it rains otherwise they are kept on the wall round-the-clock because many people pick them up in the night.
As of now Rotarians have donated maximum and insist that the clothes left behind are washed, ironed and wearable. “We are wary of the place becoming a dumping ground like it happened in Trichy,” says Preetha. The club also plans to erect a shelter on top and make shelves so that items could be better arranged. “We initiated the drive with clothes as they are the easiest to get and the fastest to move. We want more people to join in the movement voluntarily and slowly we can add more things,” says Vora.
Indeed the simple concept is picking up well across the State ever since Tirunelveli became the first district in Tamil Nadu to launch the initiative in June this year. Collector Sandeep Nanduri had read about the first wall of kindness that came up in 2015 in Iran where a person hung a few coats and warm clothes on hooks and hangers with the message: “If you don’t need it, leave it. If you need it, take it.”
The idea took off and spread not only across the country but globally as well. In India, multiple walls of kindness came up in the northern parts in the last two years besides, Mysore, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Telengana. The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation has, in fact, made senior citizens caretakers of the walls of kindness at 50 locations.
“This unique concept encourages sharing. Many times people do not know where to donate and the wall of kindness is all about public spaces filled with donations for the taking,” says Nanduri, who identified a 20 feet wall of the Collectorate compound for the purpose. Young volunteers painted the wall and a local carpenter made the shelves free of cost.
“What is lying unused in somebody’s home can be of some use to some needy person. When anybody donates and anybody picks items according to their needs, it signifies compassion towards one another,” he says and adds that he is overwhelmed to see the wall and the pavement overflowing with things including toys, kitchen items, books, shoes, blankets and clothes. “But people also rummage through the things and make the place dirty,” he points out. To keep things in place, he has now placed extra metal racks on the pavement, erected asbestos shades and tied up with local Red Cross team to sort and organise the donated things. More do-gooders are now getting together in Tirunelveli and Nanduri plans to set up more walls of kindness at bus stands and in colleges. School students in Salem and college students in Hosur have created walls of kindness in their respective institutions to help the poor and downtrodden. Surely Madurai too will come up with many more walls of kindness in the future and more number of other cities will follow suit to help many helpless people to survive.
(This column features human inspiring stories from Madurai and surroundings. E-mail soma.basu@thehindu.co.in to tell her about people you know who are silently working to make a difference in your respective areas)
QUOTES
“Wall of kindness restores faith in humanity and sends a message to the needy that they are not forgotten” – Amar Vora
“Wall of kindness spares the poor, the destitute, the street urchins the ignominy of begging. There is no oversight so nobody knows who is leaving and who is taking the things” – Preetha Vignesh