GiveBack is a place where useful things go to be useful again — and where a community quietly holds each other up, one donation at a time.
In the autumn of 2020, the rains came down like a stubborn wound that refused to heal. Rivers that had never left their banks decided that year they would leave everything behind. Our town lost its roads, its lights, and — for a while — its nerve.
Four of us, friends from college, loaded a borrowed motorcycle with whatever we could carry and rode through water past our knees. Not because we were heroes. Because a retired teacher, Mrs. Vohra, whose whole first floor had gone under, had called us and asked only one thing: “Is anyone there?”
The first delivery was a pressure cooker. Mrs. Vohra had lost her kitchen, her photo albums, and the sarees she was saving for her daughters' weddings. But she said the hardest part was sitting at the relief camp watching people eat, unable to feed anyone herself. A pressure cooker — dented, second-hand, delivered on a motorcycle that kept stalling — was all it took for her to start cooking for the whole camp again.
“ We thought we were delivering a cooker. She showed us we were delivering somebody's dignity back.
That Sunday, forty families emailed us from the same camp. By December, we had registered eleven hundred items and matched most of them in under a week. What began as a WhatsApp group called “Is Anyone There?” became a promise: no useful thing should ever sit in your cupboard while someone across the city is praying for it.
Then came the hard year. When the second wave of the pandemic emptied hospitals and oxygen ran out at the railway station, our volunteer network ran on pure refusal — refusal to let a young resident wait six hours for a cylinder while an old man two streets away had one he no longer needed. In eleven days we matched 208 oxygen concentrators and delivered 1,100 grocery kits to stranded migrant families. That wasn't charity. That was a town rediscovering that it knew its neighbours.
This is what we mean when we say intense contribution. Not grand gestures. A thousand small, stubborn, repeatable acts of paying attention.
One photo, a pincode, and an honest note. Good second-hand stuff — clothes, books, kitchenware, furniture, toys — everything counts.
Someone who genuinely needs it finds your item on the map or in the browse list, and asks for it. No middlemen, no bidding.
You agree on a day and time. Our coordinators help with transport when either side needs it.
Your old bicycle is now somebody's mathematics tuition. Your mother's crockery is a Thursday lunch. Read those stories here.
Giving is not pity. Every request is treated as a neighbour asking a neighbour — with respect, privacy and no judgment.
Real people, real pincodes, real matches. Our coordinators verify high-value items and follow up on every pickup.
What sits in your cupboard this week is often needed this week. We aim to match donations within days, not months.
We are not an NGO delivering from above. We are neighbours redistributing what we already have — and that stays free forever.
Started it all with a borrowed motorcycle and a pressure cooker. Still answers the hotline on Sundays.
Keeps 1,000 daily matches moving. Believes every donation is a tiny supply chain with a heartbeat.
Rides the hardest routes himself — muddy roads, narrow gallis, and the distant houses no one else reaches.
Listens to every requester, writes the stories, and makes sure the platform feels human in every tap.
Donate something you no longer need, request help you truly need, or join us as a volunteer.