Since the organization’s inception in July 2015, SFD has been the passion project of actor and SFD founder Evelyn Sharma and solely funded by herself and a few private individuals who believed in the mission of the organization to provide clothing to the less privileged. Sharma’s goal was to create a platform for fashion lovers to drop off their old clothing and then distribute it to the ones in need, without initial fundraising, and has been a huge success over the past two years. By taking this conservative approach, Sharma was able to show how SFD can make a difference in the lives of those less fortunate through clothing and fashion even before starting the first fundraising campaign.
Today, SFD has evolved as one of the top charity foundations in India that uses fashion as the premise of its efforts and has added renowned members from the film and fashion community to the circle of supporters. Since the inauguration of SFD in 2015, SFD has been able to supply over 6,000 items of clothing throughout India, with the main focus being on the greater Mumbai area. As the organization receives more clothes donations from all over India, SFD is now stepping into expanding operations and logistics through their first fundraising efforts.
In it’s initial years, SFD focused on spreading awareness about the cause through pop-ups stalls at fashion events and our main fundraising events the Garage Sale. 2017 has been a landmark year for SFD thus far. As the team welcomed a new honorary board member Mrs. Jhelum Gopal Dalvi, who will has pledged to support the mission by hosting a number of fundraising events for SFD. The first Fashion Fundraiser was held on 11th April earlier this year at the JHELUM fashion house in Santacruz. SFD has further tied up with social crowdfunding platform Ketto for the first online fundraising campaign, which can be found here; garnered the CSR outlets of fashion companies such as Spoyl, initiated several up-cycling projects and added the new Donate Now button to the website making it possible for everyone to support their mission with a small contribution!
In addition, SFD is looking forward to launching its first exclusive membership program later this year in addition to adding more partner NGOs and outreach efforts.
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Team SFD