Reflections On Collecting Funds For Edhi Foundation

Have you seen someone that God sent to his land for making a positive difference and creating an impact? They are lucky people, for sure.

Abdul Sattar Edhi was one of them. He was a Pakistani philanthropist, ascetic, and humanitarian who founded the Edhi Foundation, which runs the world’s largest volunteer ambulance network, along with various homeless shelters, animal shelters, rehabilitation centers, and orphanages across Pakistan.

The world knows him due to his remarkable philanthropic activities and we wish he could have been here with us today but the sad part of this world is this line, death is inevitable for everyone. Nature took its course and Edhi sahib left us on 8th July 2016. Following his death, his son Faisal Edhi took over as head of the Edhi Foundation. He is now managing the Edhi Foundation and has requested people to help donate as there is a fear of a drop in the funds after Edhi Sahib’s death.

We, the Amal group as part of our task decided to help Edhi Foundation by providing funds. We collected funds from family, friends, and strangers and every member has their own experience, which is worth reading.

This is the list of members who came forward and delivered their best in this good deed.
1) Abdul Aziz
2) Abdul Qadeer
3) Ghulam Muhammad
4) Mashal
5)Muhammad Haris Safi

Ready to jump into reading each member’s experience? Here we go

1. Abdul Aziz
   So, there was this project in my Amal fellowship which was to collect funds for Edhi foundation. It was somehow an experience I can never forget. In this project, I experienced all good and bad colors of our society. It gave an immense peace of soul while doing something for a social cause. One can really feel the energy when doing something for society and common people. I collected funds individually and social media apps like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram helped me a lot in that. First of all, I asked my friends and relatives including my family members. Their response was overwhelming and they supported me very well. Well, I asked them for donations in the past too, so there was nothing different as such. The actual challenges came when I asked strangers like shopkeepers, people at masjid for donations. Many of them refused to donate because they thought it might be some sort of scam or fraud. I contacted 2,3 social organizations but they were also short of funds. People donated in small amounts although they were very less in numbers but still, something is better than nothing. In the end, I managed to collect some amount, although it was less than my expectations but this thing helped me a lot to learn new things, how to handle failure, how to handle negativity and make something positive out of it.
2. Abdul Qadeer
   Pakistani people really want to help the needy ones. I felt this during collection of funds for Edhi Foundation. The experience was really good. I met and talked to different kinds of people and I came to know how kind our people are. I collected funds individually because I am shifted to my home from hostel due the pandemic and I am far away from my other group mates but we really help each other whenever someone need help or face any difficulties during funds collection. I faced this challenge a lot during Edhi funds collection that the people asked about the official paid or slip from Edhi Foundation. I overcame this challenge by taking their WhatsApp number and by telling them that I will share the slip when we deposit the final funds to Edhi Foundation. Many people simply refused to donate when I talked to them. But I didn’t stop because you can’t always be the winner. At times, you have to face the failure.

3) Ghulam Muhammad
The collection of fund was not a difficult task for me because I am a social activist and I have done such kind of activates at university level. I made two strategies for the collection of funds.
First, strategy to collect funds from friends. Second, strategy to collect funds from strangers.

In the first week I applied the first strategy and I collected 700 rupees from my friends. They all were educated and they knew me so they didn’t raise any questions.

In the second week, I applied the second strategy which deals with strangers. The strangers were raising different questions and I didn’t have any answers at first for those questions. The following are given below.

· Why are you collecting funds for Edhi foundation because Edhi foundation has money as they donated to the Prime Minister, Imran Khan fund?

· What is the progress of Edhi foundation in Quetta and Edhi foundation is just limited to Punjab, Sindh, and KPK?

· During collection of money, many people were not allowing me to take pictures.

· Many people asked, where the authority letter for collecting fund for Edhi Foundation is.

· The people of Balochistan were not aware of the services of Edhi foundation.

The strangers raised the above questions for which I replied that Edhi foundation represents Pakistan in all over the world and I told them the whole journey of Abdul Sattar Edhi for which they got convinced.

4) Mashal
I always feel this inner pleasure by helping people around me. This time it was not helping an individual, but a foundation. We made a strategy as a group to write a few lines that will elicit an emotional response in people, which as a result will help us collect funds for Edhi Foundation. All of the members put those lines as statuses on all social sites that are Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat. This strategy didn’t work for me as only 2 people in my social circle donated and that was not a significant amount either.

Afterwards, I went to market with one of my friend where a group of people were talking so I decided to pitch this idea of Edhi Foundation donation to them, I did it but it wasn’t fruitful either. I convinced them by provision of a proof slip of Edhi Foundation but they rejected it by the point that they don’t have money for it. Things weren’t going as expected but then I recalled the picture of Edhi Sahib standing on side of the road for funds, that thing motivated me. I came up with a new strategy and decided to take help from my close social circle and then their respective circles.

I messaged my friends personally about this cause and asked them to put my message forward to their friends, this strategy really worked and I was able to collect an appropriate amount of funds.

5) Muhammad Haris Safi
Fund raising is the process of seeking and gathering voluntary financial contributions. My experience about collecting funds for Edhi Foundation was good but challenging because it was difficult to convince people due to trust issues and as it was my first time doing such an activity. However, I was quite excited about collecting funds and thought of making a donation box.

I collected money from local people, family members, friends and their respective families. Raising of funds is a very difficult task as there are a lot of challenges in it but as Edhi sahib has left us with such a legacy that some people were very generous in giving money and even they motivated us to this cause but on the other hand some people raised many questions as this was not an official activity. Some gave money but after a lot of questions. Even to some of them, I showed the Amal academy Activity they said that they’ll verify about it. Many people gave comments, some were harsh, rude, some were funny and even a lot of people rejected by saying fake. Many people had trust issues due to many fake organizations. So these were the hurdles I faced during this fund collecting activity.

As we know, nothing in life comes easily, we have to work hard for it. The same goes for fundraising. In order to accomplish this, we have to work hard, give it time and attention and we need to arrange such things and ideas to develop people’s trust and work in an honest manner.

Life is full of ups and down, winning and losing. Facing failure at some points put minor setbacks on the ongoing project but consistent trying compensates it. It taught a major lesson that no matter what you strive for, work for, you’ll face hardships, but to never lose hope is the key to success

References
Edhi.org
Wikipedia