“Face your fears, and go the #Extramile to help a social cause”
Every society is destined to face the problems of looking after the welfare of the sick, the weak, the destitute and the needy. All societies are alike in this respect. One way of assessing the status of a society on the road to civilization is the value accorded to an individual and his basic human needs. These have not always received the attention they deserve in the planning of economics, particularly in developing countries. Most of the available resources are consumed by defense needs and pressing demands for technological progress.
Programs for development in the social sector remain a long way behind, mainly because of financial constraints. Special efforts are, therefore, needed to mobilize community resources to initiate and develop programs for the welfare of the weak and the disadvantaged members of society.

This is what Abdul Sattar Edhi started in 1951. He founded The Edhi Foundation. Which is a non-profit social welfare program in Pakistan. The Edhi Foundation provides 24-hour emergency assistance across the nation of Pakistan and abroad. The Foundation provides, among many other services, shelter for the destitute, free hospitals and medical care, drug rehabilitation services, and national and international relief efforts. Its main focuses are Emergency, Services, Orphans, Handicapped Persons, Shelters, Education, Healthcare, International Community Centers, Blood & Drug Bank, Air-Ambulances, Marine and Coastal Services.

After the death of Abdul Sattar Edhi, the funds of Edhi foundation has started declining. Few weeks earlier Faisal Edhi, son of Abdul Sattar Edhi aired an interview in which he explained that how funds of Edhi Foundation has started declining after the death of Abdul Sattar Edhi. In response to this shortfall, me with my group members including Ibtesam Naveed, Samrina Sabir, Waleed Bin Obaid, Abdul Rahman, and Daniyal Hafeez started a city-wide campaign to raise funds for Edhi foundation.
Generosity in general terms means goodness. The bitter truth is that in this 21st century, it is hard to find a generous individual but a ray of light is always present amidst the darkness around. Putting this thinking in our mind we get out of the homes. And During our fund raising campaign we came across with the people who really appreciated our efforts. They do not even asked for our authority letter or any similar stuff. Our interaction with them started with funds contribution and ends up with the well wishes. We specially loved when our others fellows appreciated us, contributed and helped us in completing our mission. And this generosity forced us to think the benefits of residing here in Pakistan. How we help each other’s. They made us feel about the virtue of bringing a smile onto other people faces.
But as every coin has two sides. Similarly every society has two-faced implications. We were thinking that we will go in the society and everyone will appreciate us with contribution of their interest. But it doesn’t happens in all cases.
It was hard to take permission from management of our university department for fund raising. We were not allowed to make announcements in the classrooms. They permit us just to set up a table for fund raising in the week after eid-ul-azha. But we were not having enough time for that. And we used other ways and sources to get permission. For that our principal cooperates with us. During fund raising campaign few fellows raise fingers on us and also made fun of us but we didn’t paid heed to their negativity, and we move to the next person thanking them for listening to us.

Besides this we faced many other problems like when we were raising funds on the Hall road a Police Officer take us to the relevant police station for investigation. As we were having authority letter from our institute so we did not faced any issues and were freed soon.
We faced many other problems but, if we talk about the purpose of this activity then these problems were the learning for us. These hardships make us able to think about the hardships of Edhi sahib which he faced. These hardships increases our level of respect for Edhi sahib to its peak. These situations made us realize that he must had faced these hardships in his life and he accepted them with a smiling face and he had never uttered a single word about these situations. And still after his death some people don’t him as a well-wisher for the destitute. But some people don’t understand this. Here we want to share a response from a Professor. We visited him for his contribution in the donation and he was about to contribute but, in the meantime one of us speaks that we are raising these funds for Edhi foundation. And he bluntly speak putting the wallet back into his pocket that I don’t understand Edhi sahib fit for the donations. There are many other people who deserves more than him. And we were swamped. I wanted to say that he is not going to use these funds for his own luxuries as he is not with us. These funds will be utilized to raise the living level of ailing and needy persons. But we were not having a position to argue and we did what Edhi sahib taught us. We leave his office by saying “Thank you so much for listening to us”.
This is what urge a sense of guilt in us. Generosity is freely sharing what you have with others without making comments. It is being willing to offer money, help or time when it is needed. To be generous means giving something that is valuable to you without expectation of reward or return. Many traditions measure generosity not by the size of the gift, but by what it cost the giver. But we are still lacking in this area. But one day we will find this secret of success insha ALLAH.
In the end I would like to say that “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” “No one has ever become poor by giving.”
“Nation of Edhi Zindabad. Pakistan Zindabad”.
