Celebrating the green spirit

It all started with an email that Shishir Goenka of Do U Speak Green an ecofriendly venture that creates organic cotton clothing sent out to 2025 other sustainable enterprises in the first week of May 2013 urging all of them to come together and create awareness about their work The idea was to pool in resources so that everyone could benefit In less than a fortnight 28 green enterprises came together to form a group and decided to call themselves The Green People of India TGPI They even came up with a selfexplanatory tagline lsquoPromoting ecoenterprises and sustainable development in Indiarsquo The Green People of India comprises 28 green entrepreneurs who have come together to promote ecoenterprises across the country Nidhi Singh joint promotion campaign and festival director of TGPI who is also the founder of Indigreen an ecofriendly fashion label says excitedly ldquoEverything happened over emails We discussed argued meaningful interchange of views voted cross voted and now finally have a name tagline plan of action and aims for our group and some ground rules for more greenies wanting to join in We are an informal fluid collective of Green Peoplerdquo Singh a former journalist says it made sense for the 28 eco ethical sustainable fair trade enterprises from 11 different cities across India to come together as all of them have limited resources to advertise themselves ldquoSome enterprises are small while others are medium in size Most of them canrsquot afford advertising campaigns So we decided to come together and realised that united we will be heard loud and clear Our whole focus is to urge consumers to shift from brand consciousness to brand lsquovaluersquo consciousnessrdquo she elaborates Some of the enterprises that are a part of TGPI are Ecofemme from Auroville that produces washable cloth pads Red Bug Store from Bangalore that makes DoItYourself kits for children Avani from Uttarakhand that creates electricity from pine needles Mumbaibased Eco Corner and Om Ved that produce a wide range of ecofriendly bath and body products and stationery items Singh states anyone can join TGPI All they have to do is fill up an online TGPI Online Application Form Members of GPI will then reach out to all applicants in the first week of August with the eligibility criteria membership procedure and guidelines along with their proposed calender of TGPI Events for the coming months She explains ldquoSomeone proposes a thought idea plan of action and all the fellow Green People are included in the email Responses start coming in Someone volunteers to take up the project others send their go ahead and the volunteer puts the plan into motionrdquo In fact this was how TGPI organised its firstever The Green People Festival from June 79 at Bandra ldquoThe threeday event gave a platform from farfetched enterprises from Uttarakhand Karnataka and Auroville to showcase their products and reach out to more people We chose Bandra as it boasts of global crowd who are not only welltravelled but are also ecoconsciousrdquo Singh says TGPI is planning to conduct at least four such major events every year This will include two editions of The Green People Festival while the remaining will be collaborative efforts such as The Green People Popup bazaar at any major festival or event like Dastkaar etc ldquoWe would ideally like to have each event in a different metrordquo she adds The 20something Mumbai resident states that TGPI aims to be a sustained movement that not only evolves over a period of time but also manages to convince the government to make ecofriendly products easily accessible and affordable Log on to thegreenpeoplein or visit their Facebook pageTheGreenPeopleOfIndia for a list of online green estores u00a0