Candle Community; Helping Hands from Miles Away
How does it sound if the bottles and cans you buy for drinks or beverages have fixed refund amounts? What if you can earn money by selling those bottles easily once you are done with the consumption of the drinks that they hold? What if you can make money from the unnecessary things that come across your daily life?
Amazing enough, right? Such is the system Denmark Government has. And keeping the same system in the mind, two young Nepali minds at Denmark have started an entrepreneurial journey to contribute for ‘Kids Education & Women Empowerment’ in rural Nepal with the money collected by selling those cans and bottles.
Before telling you, who they are and what they are doing, let me explain this recycling system in Denmark on surface level.
Dansk Retursystem (PANT)
Dansk Retursystem in Denmark is simply the plastic bottles and cans recycling system regulated by law since 2002. It has the exclusive right to operate the deposit and return system, which collects, counts, sorts and separates bottles and cans and sends them for recycling.
Under this system, every bottles and cans used for water, cold drinks or liquor have a fixed refund amounts. This is called ABC deposit system; ‘Pant A’, ‘Pant B’ and ‘Pant C’. Here, each PANTs are allocated a fixed price on the basis of the materials used in the bottles and cans, its volume and the possibility to be recycled or reused.
For the bottles and cans with deposit mark, which can be recycled:
- Pant A = DKK 1.00 (glass bottles and aluminium cans less than 1 litre)
- Pant B = DKK 1.50 (plastic bottles less than 1 litre)
- PantC = DKK 3.00 (all bottles and cans of 1–20 litres)
For the bottles and cans without deposit mark, which can be cleaned and refilled:
- Glass bottles under 0.5 litres = DKK 1.00
- Glass bottles over 0.5 litres = DKK 3.00
- Plastic bottles under 1 litre = DKK 1.50
- Plastic bottles over 1 litre = DKK 3.00
{DKK – Danish Krone, official currency of Denmark)
About Candle Community
Candle Community is a start-up social enterprise based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Making the best utilization of the recycling system in Denmark, Candle Community visions to contribute mainly for the ‘Kids Education & Women Empowerment’ in rural Nepal.
Most of the rural Nepal are still under the shadow of illiteracy. There are no enough schools, teachers or any other kind of needful physical infrastructure. In addition to that, the deleterious earthquake back in 2015 added more pain and hassles in this sector. Many of the schools got collapsed and the students faced more difficulties to have regular and quality education. Till today, not every school in every rural district are not completely re-built. The kids still don’t have the required study materials to go to school and have formal education.
Taking this scarcity into consideration, Candle Community aims to help those underprivileged kids as much as possible with the funds raised by recycling the bottles and cans in Denmark.
For the work flow, the founders (team members) at Denmark collect the bottles and cans as a donation from the Nepali or native people from Denmark, sell them, get donations and send the money to Nepal where other team members invest for the social service or for some good cause in rural Nepal.
Apart from the contribution to the underprivileged kids in Nepal, it’s promoting the culture of recycling and maintaining environmental ecology intact throughout the world.
Team Members
Bijay Lamichhane and Satish Chhetri, two flat mates at Denmark had always this dream in their mind to help Nepal and Nepali people in any way they can even being miles away. Mr. Lamichhane is a student of ‘Social Entrepreneurship’ and a photographer by passion whereas Mr. Chhetri is a student of ‘Economics’ in Denmark.
“Whenever we used to have some time to spend together, apart from the struggling life in abroad, we used to talk mostly about Nepal and the current affairs. The dissatisfying news used to dishearten us too much. Thus, we always wanted to do something for our beloved country from our side. However, we were not being able to come up with a concrete idea.” Mr. Lamichhane shared with Poon Diaries.
He further added, “As I am a photographer by passion, I keep attending a lot of parties and programmes. There, I see these plastic bottles and cans littered around people dump them along with the garbage. Then, this idea came in my mind; how about collecting all these liters as a donation from others, sell them and do something for Nepal? This might have a lesser price here but can be a very huge thing for those who are in need back in my country. Afterwards, we, me and Satish decided to give it a try and founded Candle Community just a month ago, February, 2018.”
“Actually, the idea was not totally new here. Some people had already done this in past. But, adding some more innovative ideas, we decided to do the same for the good cause.” Satish, another founder shared his words.
The team members list includes Subash Joshi, Samuyel Joshi and Pooja Shah who are in Kathmandu, Nepal. They invest the funds raised by Bijay and Satish in the appropriate places in Nepal.
How Candle Community is raising funds?
- Collecting the plastic bottles and cans and selling them
- Asking for the plastic bottles and cans as a donation to others (Nepali or Danes)
- Providing voluntary service to help in disposal of litters in return
Right to Write – The First Project
After the ‘Candle Community’ was founded, the founders Bijay and Satish immediately came up with this first project called ‘Right to Write‘. This project basically targets to help the kids in rural Nepal who are deprived of good education. Under this, Candle Community has planned to provide enough study materials and uniforms to those kids or even help to improve the infrastructure of the schools.
Based on this project, just a week ago, Candle Community visited a primary school at Chandragiri-2, Jhagajhiti and distributed the study materials to around 25 kids from the same village. For this project, within a month, Bijay and Satish had raised DKK 1300 (Nrs. 22,000+). The team members on the field reported that the parents and the villagers were overwhelmed with such a help and are expecting for the same in coming days as well just to see their kids educated, which they couldn’t be. They indeed are happy to see their kids holding copies and pencils, which they cannot afford.
Future Plans
Mr. Lamichhane from Denmark shared Candle Community’s future plans as, “We, all the team members of Candle Community are very happy to carry out the first contribution under our first project. This is just a beginning. We are thinking to contribute even more in this particular field. Plus, we are planning to come up with some ideas for women empowerment in Nepal, which needs more of the attention. Till then, we just need everyone’s support and off-course our determination for Candle Community.”
“If you have a loving heart to lend your helping hands, then, the distance doesn’t matter.”
Candle Community is a perfect example. All the best to Candle Community from Poon Diaries.
Keep inspiring.
