Local NGO, government launch charity drop box for clothes, footwear in Erbil

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Drop boxes to recycle clothes and footwear items were sprawled across the Kurdistan Region’s capital Erbil on Monday, organized by a local NGO and a government ministry.

The Accepting Others Organization (AOO) along with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Ministry of Municipalities and Tourism launched donation boxes in six different neighborhoods in the Kurdish capital. The boxes are intended to collect donated clothes and footwear which later will be distributed to low-income families, Ari Dilshad, AOO Executive Director, told Kurdistan 24 on Monday.

The boxes have been installed in the neighborhoods of Italian City 1 and 2, Empire World, Baxtiyari, Waziran, and Dream City, according to the NGO. The scope of the project is currently in Erbil, Dilshad said, planning to expand it to other cities in the near future.

The charity work was launched with the participation of local authorities, including the ministry of municipalities, the governor of Erbil, and environmental and civil activists as well as other volunteers. The Region’s authorities threw their support behind the group for the “sacred work” they are doing, according to the ministry.

The project, according to the organization, has a positive environmental aspect as it reuses clothing and other items that are no longer wanted by their original owners.

AOO is a Kurdish NGO – with branches in the three provinces of the autonomous Kurdistan Region – aiming to “achieve human rights and ensure peaceful co-existence through promoting tolerance.”

The Region has recently witnessed a boom in the numbers of NGOs and civil activists that work in the fields of environmentalism and social justice.

Editing by Joanne Stocker-Kelly