Edhi Foundation Project
The Edhi Foundation is one of the well known non-profitable social welfare organization based in Pakistan. It was founded by Abdul Sattar Edhi in 1951, who served as the head of the organization until his death on 8 July 2016. After Sir Abdul Satar Edhi’s death, the Foundation is struggling due to a lack of funds. So Amal Academy gave us a task on collecting funds for Edhi Foundation. The idea was to reflect the experience of collecting funds, the challenges we face, what were our strategies, how has the experience helped us in overcoming failures, and most importantly to collect funds for the Foundation.
Right of the bat, I start with the experience of collecting funds for a social cause.
Since my team and I did this task individually because of the Covid situation and not everyone was in the city and we live far from each other so it was best to capture 5 areas individually than 1 area in a group. So everyone had a different experience. Few of us had never experienced fundraising and it was the first time for us to get out of our comfort zone and reach out to people near our surroundings and we observed different responses like people want to help but each one of them is tied up in their situation and sometimes pulling out a rupee and so is very hard for them and many people were hesitant of authenticity and credibility but at the same time those people who have at some point in their life have participated in the donation and charity drives were very cooperative and donated to the very best of the ability in no time. And one of our members has had experience with collecting funds for various causes, mostly at a smaller scale, and this time he decided to simply approach outsiders from outside the country.
Now first of our strategy was to simply put statuses on our social media accounts and wait for the replies. We all expected no replies, I mean what one can expect from this society where people can raise their voice if it’s their problem but can not even help someone who needs help.
But still, we had hope, we hoped that one might help and work for the cause. But this leaves us nowhere. So what we did is texted as many people as we could so that we at least get some response.
We did get some responses collected funds but most of the people were giving false hope or ignoring the text.
Farwa, one of my members tried to apply in many other fundraising ventures along with the permission letter and is now waiting for a Positive response. Hajra on the other hand asked everyone if they can’t pay then they can download JazzCash account with her link so she gets Rs. 50 that she can donate. Hassaan had this experience so he was confident. I called everyone individually and made them promise to donate. While Israr made a poster which you can see on the top and wrote a text and sent it to everyone. This the beautiful message Israr made and it worked on almost everyone.
Now, how has this experience helped us in accepting failure?
We should see failure as a tool to improve, instead of a barrier that can block us from where we want to go in life. But we learn how does it feel like to be on the receiving side and how does it feels to be rejected for a Rupee or so. It helped us realized and accept the multiple mindsets in our society and understanding the various reasons behind it. The failures are the actual sign of being on right track and it helped us realized that we should come up with more donor-friendly fundraising activities. So that we can achieve maximum welfare at both the receiving and donating sides.
Thank you from Circle 9 batch 174 to Amal Academy that they gave us the chance to work for such a great cause and thank you to everyone who participated in this fundraising.