An interview with the founder of The Kalyanmayee Project, Archit Agarwal. In the interview, he shares the story of the birth of The Kalyanmayee Project, where he would like to see it going and everything in between. Through its internship program, the project focuses on engaging students in creating, documenting and designing paper products and emphasizing the value of recycling to the community.
Asesha: Can you tell us about the birth of The Kalyanmayee Project?
Archit: It was 2011 and I wanted to do something with my summer. I didn't want to intern with a corporate office because I felt like that was a little boring. So I did a lot of research and looked into what I could do and my dad works at the airport where they were starting this huge paper segregation drive. It was lead by this company called Kalyanmayee. After learning about the company, I went to their factory for a meeting with their head. I talked to them about trying to do something with them, and they agreed! I didn't want to do it alone, so I created an internship program for the factory to train high school students in making paper. We experimented with what we wanted to do and where we wanted this project to go. So, the first team essentially created the curriculum. We had a bunch of products that we made, which we sold in my school and the money that we made went to a non-profit of their choice.
Asesha: Can you tell us about the curriculum you designed?
Archit: The first year we got a certain number of students and we divided them into two teams: a production team and a documentary team. The production team is now further divided into teams that work just on making paper, another that focuses on creating hard goods from the paper, a third that sells the goods. There's also a marketing team as well as a team that's just in charge of the arts (screen printing and design). The purpose of the documentary team was to journal and document the story of the factory along with the things that the students were doing because the one big thing about this factory was that even though it was in the middle of Delhi, in a very nice area, nobody knew about what the factory does. We wanted to improve its presence arounds the nation but specifically around Delhi, corporate offices, schools, which are good sources of paper for the factory.
Asesha: What did the factory do before the project started in comparison to what it does now?
Archit: The factory itself is a paper recycling factory. They took paper from the airport authority of India and a couple airlines and the paper they took, they used it to make recycled paper, which was then made into different products. They made mostly clerical things like files and name tags, When we came in, we started learning how to make books, diaries, gift tags, bags, etc. We took it in a creative way and got more people involved.
Asesha: Where would you like to see the project in 10 years?
Archit: The first year, we started a paper credit system with high schools. They would segregate the paper and give it to the factory. The factory would weigh the product and in the Rupee value of that product they would give back paper in any way, shape or form. My school used to have a lot of assemblies and stuff, where they would have a lot of invites. All those invites were then made on Kalyanmayee paper. So we created a paper credit system that wasn't just 20 days of students being here, it was a whole year-round project where students are actually coming and schools are being involved. I want to see that being built up more and seeing more students coming in. The overall presence needs to be bigger. I think that the internship itself has a big presence but how can we translate that to better things further?
I actually wanted to take this project from private high schools students, which is what our demographic has been, and take it to public schools, to children who may or may not go to college and need some vocational skills that may translate to a job outside high school.
