Manav Sadhna Community Center, Ahmedabad

The Manav Sadhna Community Center helps teach valuable skills about ragpicking within an impoverished community. One of the most remarkable parts of this center is the architecture. The building design utilizes found objects in innovative ways, sending a beautiful message – that waste can have worth again.

A group gathers outside during a lesson

A woman teaches the group about textiles

Three girls at the center sit in front of a wall made of glass bottles and mortar.

These windows utilize bits of metallic food packaging known as Tetra-pak between sheets of acrylic

The people at the center were really friendly, and the kids especially loved having their pictures taken.

There were a lot of personalities in this bunch

I asked the girls to spread their arms out wide and got these beautiful smiles

The next part of my day was a much less glamorous view into the industry of ragpicking, a real job for hundreds of thousands of people in India. Garbage is collected both formally and informally and brought to locations where it is sorted and recycled. Organic waste is sorted ahead of time, so the centers of sorting are remarkably free of bad odors

A woman sorts through garbage

Garbage is compacted and tied with wire in metal bin

Garbage after being compacted.