Let’s Save Their Souls

Before any of you think, “Oh another boring material related to donations”, let me clear that this article might open up your mind to some new knowledge and awareness to what actually the current situation is and at which level do we all lie.

I had once learnt in my psychology class that every life on this world is connected and that it continues a loop. If even a single life is disturbed, it causes disturbance in the whole loop. That’s what humanity is for you. We enter this world bearing a responsibility to work for others, and we can reach the ultimate ends of ecstasy if we fulfill the law of altruism.

Let’s apply it to the factor of widows, orphans and homeless people.

Look at this child to the left. And think about your childhood, what were you doing at this age, what were you friends, or cousins or siblings were doing at this age? Does this hit your heart? We sympathize to such homeless children by sharing posts on social media or making art or illustrations for them, but does that make any difference except for gaining likes and shares? What do we actually do to bring change for such people?

Now let’s have a look at situation with a closer proximity.

This is the image of old man who became homeless because he was just old and there was no place for him to go. And he is from Lahore, Pakistan. We all are aware ( yes, we always are aware, and that’s the limit to what we do, being aware) that how many old people get thrown out of houses, or even widows or children and they beg on streets with absolutely no hope, and even getting insulted by people.

Being a part of the humanity’s loop, Amal Fellowship Batch 151 decided to collect donations for Edhi Foundation. Edhi Foundation is the single best foundation across Pakistan and one of the best social welfare service providers across the world running on non-commercial, non-political, and non-communal basis, serving round-the-clock without any discrimination of color, class, and creed is enjoying exclusive credentials in the shape of awards and shields conferred upon Mr. Abdul Sattar Edhi and Mrs. Bilquis Edhi by governmental and non-governmental organizations on national and international level for rendering their exemplary services to humanity in multidimensional fields.

Moreover, due to immense and destructive floods in Karachi, we decided to donate all the money to Edhi branches from Karachi so the deserving people over there can get the necessary help.

This is an image of people being homeless after their houses were destroyed by flood.

So returning to the collection of donations, there are lots of groups in batch 151 so we proceeded with our plan in groups. As it was the time of pandemic, we couldn’t go out and communicate with lots of people, but our group made a poster, set aside a JazzCash and EasyPaisa account for money transaction. We shared it at every possible social media platform, be it Whatsapp, Instagram, Facebook, to groups and even in private chats. We reached to our family, friends and even the people we didn’t know.

We wrote heartful descriptive messages with the poster to let the people know the intensity and worth of the work we are doing and why their part is necessary.

We also constructed Urdu version of the message as most of our population relate to and feel the situation best in their Mother Language.

In the second week, we realized that people are not responding much. Even though we became frustrated by how low the response rate is, we still didn’t loose hope and tried to find even more sites where we could share our poster. We even changed our message structure and made it more intense. We believed that we are doing noble work, after all, so why lose hope so early.

After constant and vigorous efforts to reach each and every person and not to miss out any spot, we, a group of seven members, collected Rs.11500/- in two weeks. This amount feels like a blessing after such weak responses, even though we couldn’t reach our goal of Rs. 20,000, but any money collected is valuable and can change someone’s life.

Our experience have different faces, some of us might call it a bad experience because the response rate was too low, some felt high because they were a part of something noble, while for some members, they learnt a lot. Probably, we all learnt something from it, like how to convince people, how to communicate, how to reach out to hearts, how to keep hoping, not losing belief and finally, how to accept reality and learn from failure. Some were already connected to social sector and had collected donations before so they were ready to face the rejections, yet the ignorance hit hard.

We also learnt about the current situation of the general population. We got responses about questioning our credibility, about how they have already donated to other places, that why should money be donated to Edhi Centre when they have given Ten million rupees to PM Corona Relief Fund and many more ridiculous answers. Some members were even ridiculed which made them hesitant to even share the post again, while a few people just liked or gave thumbs up the poster and ignored what actually needed to be done.

This is the reality of our country. We did not ask for thousands, we just asked for a few hundreds, or even less, and for those who deserved it but they can spend Rs. 5000/- on a Sapphire dress but not Rs. 100/- for a homeless child. Guess it takes to be in someone’s shoes “literally” to feel their pain.

And yet we didn’t lose hope, we set aside our frustrations and kept getting back to work, asking people for the smallest amount, either 10 rupees or 5 rupees but, at least, some amount.

This is the image of a staff member playing with an abandoned child at Edhi Centre. Imagine a small helpless child alone on streets, someone who can’t even walk, and imagine that he finally gets a shelter, food and clothes. If this doesn’t pull your strings to help such people, I don’t know what will.

Because in the end, we all will be questioned about our wealth, and about what we did for those whom we knew deserved our help.