“I can begin small but why should I think small”
This was the vision of Abdul Sattar Edhi Sb. He spend his life for the service of humanity. He wanted to serve the mankind. He believed that there is no better purpose in life than to serve the humanity therefore he started small but his thinking wasn’t confined with the boundaries, rather he always used to Think Big!
After the death of Edhi SB. his organisation is facing a lot of problems to bear expenses. Therefore it’s the duty of whole nation to support his vision and mission and also play our roles in order to help his organisation meet their expenses. I think this is the least we could do. Because whatever sacrifices he gave, no one could do that.
So, as per task assigned we’ve had to accept the problem solving challenge and collect funds for Edhi Foundation. We identified the problem that after death of Edhi sb. his organization is facing huge loss. They are in dire need of financial assistance. So we owned the problem, considering that we being the responsible citizens must collect funds for them. So finally after brainstorming we decided to ask Emporium and Square Mall’s managements that if they could allow us to conduct a campaign for fund raising but they were reluctant. Without prior notice and direct NOC from Edhi Foundation nobody allowed to conduct fundraising campaign.
We decided to visit Liberty market to collect funds and we started. It wasn’t easy at the start because people were not convinced by our speech rather they were thinking we might be imposers and all this could be a scam. We were quite disappointed initially because people were not willing to even listen to us. One of the shopkeeper literally said “Muaf kar Bhai”. And we were like we are going to fail big time. But then we also remembered that “The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time”. Therefore we didn’t lose hope and gather some courage again and started to collect funds. This time around the management of liberty market stopped us and they didn’t allowed us without proper NOC from Edhi Foundation. So we went to the markets beside Liberty and asked people for funds. We were glad that finally we were able to convince a few of them and collected funds. We asked them “It doesn’t matter either its 10, 20, 100 Rupees, what matters most is your support”. This line was enough to convince, because people were making small contributions but at least they we supporting.
Keeping in mind the vision of Edhi Sb. to start small. We convinced people to start small, contribute a small sum of amount but at least it was just start and it really worked. We also got some really positive feedback. One Uncle said “I don’t believe Edhi Sb. died, I believe he is still alive in Our Youth, people like you.”Some people we also of the view that we were defraud and also robbing the poor people who actually deserve the funds but we convinced them somehow.
Some common comments from shopkeepers were“Haji Sahab nahi hain” “Wadday haji shb nai hain”.
People also said that the might need to go to ATM because they didn’t had any cash. People also asked that what the guarantee that funds would reach Edhi Foundation we tried to convince them by showing letter but still they were not trusting us.
Summing up over all it was amazing experience. We learned how to convince people and how to keep aside our ego. We also learnt the actual meaning of getting out of comfort zone and walking extra mile for real.
Finally I would like to thank my group members and special thanks to Muhammad Haseeb and Namarah Malik because they joined us and we were two groups out there applying AMAL principles. And tried to give our best.
Groups Members:
Farhan
Mazhar
Awais
Naveed
Zubair
Safdar
Group Members
Muhammad Haseeb
Namarah Malik