The silver' lining: Selling jewellery for a cause

Bengaluru: Social media has evolved from keeping in touch with friends to promoting businesses and even supporting worthy causes. Today, NGOs have taken heavily to social media marketing, using it to spread awareness and for crowd-funding initiatives. There still aren't too many like Urban Tribals, however, a social-media-run platform that helps mobilize funds for different NGOs and causes across the country.

'Urban Tribals' was originally formed as a Facebook group for women to flaunt, sell and de-clutter their silver jewelry collections. As time passed, the group's aim evolved to raising money for NGOs. The idea which was the brain-child of Atraeyee Niharchandra and Indu Nair, didn't merely raise Rs 73,400, but also gave the potential of like-minded women keen to bring about a difference in the society a chance to flourish.  

“I started the page a year ago, with 250 friends who wanted to flaunt their silver jewellery collections. Last September, I opened it for sale as well. It was just a closed group with discussions about buying and selling jewellery. By January 2016 there were 2500 members although it was still a fun group, like so many others on social media,” says 32-year-old Atraeyee Niharchandra, who is a nutritionist and naturopath by profession. “By then we were also promoting de-cluttering and slowly began to realize the power of such groups. That's when Indu came up with an idea that would bring a lot more to the table,” says Atraeyee.

Indu suggested a donation drive for NGOs since the group's strength had grown in leaps and bounds, with a number of members eager to engage and participate. “That's how we began lending form to our idea and vision,” said Atraeyee. “We decided to combine both donations and the concept of de-cluttering. We sat together to decide on a model that would help raise a sizeable chunk without taking too much of a toll on our own pockets,” added Atraeyee, who wanted her group to be a highly-disciplined donation drive conducted with a high level of transparency.

“It was great to see each and every woman come together to discuss and ideate for the drive,” says Atraeyee. The drive was about selling one's old pieces of jewelry in the group at a meager price of Rs 200. “I was very adamant about the price  because it is neither cheap nor totally inexpensive. It was the perfect amount to attract buyers and sellers alike,” she explained.

The drive was a nine-day event (November 1 to November 10) asking members of the group to de-clutter their homes by putting up their unused jewellery for sale on social media platforms, where group members could make their purchases. “The money raised from the sale of jewelry in the group will be donated to CUPA where it will be spent on animals in need. There were some ground rules for the participants. Each day's collection was shared with the members by posting an excel sheet in the group and tagging the buyers and sellers.

The nine-day drive, which celebrated the joy of giving saw them raise Rs 73,400 which was donated to five NGOs in three cities. “The donation was given to CUPA Second chance, Enablers United, Karuna Sadan (An NGO in Mumbai), Arpan ( NGO for autistic Children in Mumbai) and Code Red( an initiative on sanitary napkins run by three girls in Chennai),” says Atraeyee who was surprised (pleasantly) by the response she received.

Atraeyee plans to raise money again through such initiatives again. “We are planning two such drives every year but this time we will need better focus and a more detailed plan as this drive was just the first and turned out to be an unprecedented success,” she concluded.