Collecting Funds for the renowned Edhi Foundation
Edhi foundation
The Edhi Foundation is a non-profit 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. The Edhi Foundation is headquartered in the city of Karachi.
The Edhi Foundation provides 24-hour emergency assistance across the entirety of Pakistan and internationally. 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. The organization’s main focuses are emergency services, orphans, handicapped persons, women’s shelters, education, healthcare, international community centers, refugees, missing persons, blood donation & drug rehabilitation banks, air ambulance services and marine and coastal services. The organization is known to serve those in need regardless of race, religious affiliation, and social status, and runs entirely on donations and volunteer efforts. While the Edhi Foundation’s primary focus is in Pakistan as well as the rest of South Asia, it has an extensive presence throughout the Middle East and Africa. However, it has also provided financial and supplementary aid to countries in Europe and the Americas in the event of natural disasters (such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005) or other issues. As of 2020, the Edhi Foundation has international head offices present in the United States, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Australia, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and Japan.
Amal Academy
Education startup funded by Stanford University that teaches professional skills to students and corporations. It works on skills development like soft skills, communication skills, leadership, problem solving, adaptability and team work.
Amal Academy has collaborated with Edhi foundation for raising donations. The fellows of Amal Academy collect funds and submit it to Edhi foundation. After Abdul Sattar Edhi sab, his predecessor Faisal Edhi runs the foundation. The donations of Edhi foundation got lower after the death of Abdul Sattar. Amal Academy joined hands with Edhi foundation for the noble cause.
Batch 171: In batch 171 there’s total of 8 groups. Each group consists of 7–8 members. Our moderators have given a task of funds collection for Edhi foundation. This task is for 2 weeks (5th and 6th) of learning sessions.
For this task every group has arranged its member meeting and discussed their ideas of funds collection. After that we’ve arranged 2 batch meetings to make a one batch strategy for funds collection. In batch meetings group circle leaders and other members participated and discussed funds collection strategy.
1st meeting minutes Agenda; Batch strategy for Edhi Foundation fundraising
Exchange of ideas by each circle.
Detailed discussion on each idea.
Decision of going with distributed leadership concept.
Each circle will be responsible for collecting funds as they see fit, each individual will have a target to meet.
Formation of the main body with representatives from each circle.
How to maintain complete transparency.
Ideas discussed:
• Old book sale
• Selling printed T-shirts (Edhi + Amal)
• Social media
• Donation boxes (Departmental stores, Pharmacies, Doctors)
Final meeting agenda:
Each circle raises a certain amount of money, Rs.15000/ each circle.
Each circle has representative that will be responsible for the following;
Making transaction + keeping a record/screenshots of all the transactions
Transaction media (Jazz cash /bank account/ Edhi account)
Keep in touch with the centralized committee.
Central leader (SANWAL) will keep a track of all the associated proceedings
After that meetings each group started working and collecting funds according to the discussed strategies in batch meetings.
I and my group number belong to group circle 6. We discussed every night about the progress of funds collection. We also discussed different strategies to collect funds more effectively such as using Edhi Sahib’s Quotes.
From our group Muhammad Bilal was the representative of our group to the central committee. We’ve designed a poster for funds collection and on it we’ve given the names of Ayeza Saleem and Laraib Ahmad with their Jazz cash/Easy paisa account details to collect funds.
We’ve collected funds by putting status/post on social media (e.g. Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram, LinkedIn etc.). We personally collected funds through messaging, calling and asking from our friends/relatives and strangers. We put a box for funds collection to our group member Faisal’s restaurant.
After doing this project every member share their point of views on overall challenge.
Muhammad Bilal response:
It was my first time of funds collection for any welfare organization. It was really amazing experience to collect funds from the persons you know and those you don’t know. Those who give you funds shows trust on you. May Allah Almighty accept this deed.
I collected funds individually but coordinating with other members because we’ve made a poster on which other member’s Jazz cash/Easypaisa account was given and belong to different cities.
I faced the challenge that people wouldn’t give you donation, they don’t rely on you. They committed to give fund but don’t give you. I overcome this challenge by contacting personally more and more and interacting many times. This strategy is quite helpful around 60%.
This experience helped me to overcome the lack of confidence and getting things from others. It boosted my confidence and dealing techniques with others.
Nafeesa Tahir response:
Collecting funds for a social cause as we know that for the each single rupee we’ll collect, some deserving person or kid would be fed with food, or some sick will get medicine, or some person shivering with cold could get a shelter or a blanket. We wish that may ALLAH accept this collection from us.
I collected funds individually and submitted the total amount as batch to Edhi foundation because almost all of our circle members are in different cities and we collected funds through online campaign, by following the strategy decided with in batch.
The major challenge I faced during this online campaign is that when people ignored our messages or even some responded at first but didn’t respond back and asking them again and again was such a difficult task. But we overcome this feeling of disappointment, by trying again and again and then we witnessed by the will of ALLAH, that after these closed doors some unexpected doors were opened which donated generous amount of money for this social cause and we were thankfully able to achieve our target and it was a great experience and for the first time I did such kind of project and learned a lot about how to overcome failure and focus on your aim.
Faisal response:
My experience was quite good most of time due to work load I used to forward fundraising posters to my friend and family circle and I learned a thing whenever you didn’t urge them to donate they can’t donate even a Penny
I most of time collect fund individually per approaching person to person, or through urging people in my WhatsApp group it was quite difficult task.
Ayeza Saleem Response:
It was a great experience. I learnt from it a lot. I learned that you have to try again and again to achieve your goal. If someone is not responding to you, you don’t need to be disappointed. You need to use some different tactics.
Hafsa Ashfaq response:
It was a nice feeling to collect the funds for a social cause as we know that for the each single rupee we’ll collect, some deserving person or kid would be fed with food, or some sick will get medicine, or some person shivering with cold could get a shelter or a blanket. We wish that may ALLAH accept this collection from us.
I collected funds individually because almost all of our circle members are in different cities, so we collected funds on individual basis.
The major challenge I faced during this online campaign is that when people ignored our messages or even some responded at first but didn’t respond back. But we overcome this feeling of disappointment, by trying again and again and then we witnessed by the will of ALLAH, that after these closed doors some unexpected doors were opened which donated generous amount of money for this social cause and we were thankfully able to achieve our target.
Mohsin Saleemi response:
It was a good experience and though a learning one. Some people proved to be very supportive and at the same time some people don’t even bother what I was asking them.
As it was done individually so we can’t take advantage of 1 or 1 gyarah.
The greatest challenge was the bad responses from some of my friends who said it’s useless and doubted that it will not reach the people who deserve it. Well I ignored them and kept trying. Because keep trying in the right direction is the only option we have after all.
Rana Laraib response:
It’s been a great experience and tough learning for me. Some people helped without saying a word but many don’t believe that I’m doing it for charity work.
But one thing that I have learned is to never say no always try. I have done something that I have imagined to do.
And we crossed the estimated targets and collected more than fifteen thousand.
