Purpose in Life!

Our Mega Project:

Life is uncertain. We can set our goals but we are never sure if we will be able to achieve them or not. We just have to devote ourselves and give our best. Sometimes, all happens vice versa of what you think. The same happened to us. But it was a positive change. A change which gave all the 8 members of our circle, a “Purpose in Life”. In the beginning, we chose career counseling as our Mega Project for Amal Fellowship. But, Karma has other plans. Though, I have to choose what I always wanted to do. Social welfare! I always wanted to work as a volunteer for the welfare of the people. So we, as a circle, came up with a strategy to help the people in any manner we can. For our Mega Project, Our Circle agreed upon the idea that we should start a social non-profit organization that could help the underprivileged people to meet their basic needs like food, medications, education, and the other basics, etc. When we finalized our problem statement, we came to know that there’s already a foundation that’s already working very well in Karachi. So, with the help of our facilitators, we decided to collaborate with the foundation.

Collaborating with the Rab Raziq Foundation:

Rab Raziq Foundation was primarily founded by fellows of Batch-143 at Amal Academy. They started it as their Mega Project, but just like us, it gave them a purpose in life. They enjoyed the feeling to help people. It gave them a satisfaction which was the source of motivation for them. So they decided to prolong it and they devoted themselves to the betterment of the community through this platform. RRF is basically providing the basic facilities to the people who are unable to meet it e.g. Rashon Drives, Blood Donations, Medical Emergencies, Providing Working Equipments, Educational Facilities, etc. So their mission matched with ours. The team of RRF Karachi was so helping and admiring. They helped us to overcome the obstacles we faced during the donation collection procedure.

Our Problem Statement:

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the World” — Nelson Mandela — .

Keeping the statement in view, we decided to primarily start with the problem which is very common in our society. To find and provide education to the children who are underprivileged and are unable to get enough resources to continue even their basic education.

It was a necessary step towards development. Because it required a long-term commitment and devotion towards the goal we were setting. It wasn’t a matter of just one or two months. We chose a goal that will lead us to the purpose of life. So, as a group, we decided to take this long-term challenge.

Operational Strategy:

Firstly, we came up with a plan to primarily pick two of the children who are deserving enough. So we tried to find in Lahore first, but fortunately, I found two children within my reachable premises. So, with that, I took the responsibility of those two children and talked to his father with our noble motive. Their father is a daily wager, who’s facing many troubles to meet both ends meet, due to the Pandemic situation nowadays. He was happy, so we were.

Feasibility of the Expenses:

With the help of one of our circle members Fatima, whose mother is a teacher in a Government School, we gathered some info about the procedure of the admissions and expenses. After that, we managed to collect quotations from the market as well to fulfill our requirements. Finally, with the help of Amir (Our Accounts Geek), we managed to come up with a proper feasibility report which showed the exact picture of our financial target.

Duties and Responsibilities:

After confirming the feasibility, we mutually decided on our duties and responsibilities. Which I’m going to discuss one by one. I, as a Circle Leader, decided to take over all the fieldwork e.g. Purchasing of stationary and Uniforms, Printing Stickers, School Admissions, Follow Up, etc. Whereas the responsibilities of others are discussed here.

· Waleed took the responsibility to find the donors

· Amir took the responsibility to maintain accounts.

· Hassan decided to help the social media team by making advertisement posters.

· Fahad decided to incorporate it with the RRF Karachi team.

· Maria took the responsibility to maintain the Instagram page of RRF.

· Maham took the responsibility to look after the LinkedIn page of RRF.

· Fatima took an initiative and created a new Twitter page of RRF and posted the cases there.

Social Media Campaign:

After finalizing the duties and responsibilities of every member, we focused on social media platforms. We post cases on every platform we have. And the results were outstanding. We managed to increase the followers at all three platforms e.g. Facebook, Instagram. and LinkedIn. On twitter, we got a bunch of positive responses too. The main purpose of these social media campaigns was to forward awareness about education so that the interested and aware people can donate to enhance this noble cause. The postings on all the platforms are attached herewith.

Facebook:

Twitter:

Instagram:

LinkedIn:

Posters shared in WhatsApp groups:

Donations:

By the Grace of Allah, within the time span of two weeks, we managed to achieve our target and we gathered almost a yearly amount to meet the expenses of two children with the joint efforts of RRF Karachi and Circle 1 of Batch-160.

Meanwhile, we also arranged two of the donors who will be cooperating on a monthly basis, which means we have a solid backup plan too. It made our goal sustainable as well.

The RRf Karachi supported us and cooperated very much in the process of collecting the donations.

Achievements:

With the help of enough donations, we successfully managed those two children to get enrolled in Government Jamia Chishtia Public High School Faisalabad in the 4th and 3rd standard. Books were provided by the school. We managed to provide them Uniforms, Bags, Stationary, and copies with covers and stickers. We also gave them a pocket money amount for a month and transportation expenses for a month as well.

Other Cases:

We even managed to help the RRF Karachi team in finalizing their other two cases as well.

1- University Student Case# 309:

A University student in Karachi, needed some amount to pay her final year fee. This case was posted by RRF Karachi. we, on behalf of RRF Punjab, paid some amount to the concerning team.

2- Medical Emergency Case#310:

Another case posted by RRF Karachi was that a person needed to purchase a very essential medicine for her sister, so with the help of our two circle members Maham and Waleed, we managed to pay them the whole amount for that particular project.

Expenses:

This is our expenses detail. Amir helped me in noting down each and every expense I made. It would help us to be totally transparent in front of our donors as we can share these details with them to build our trust.

Obstacles:

We have to deal with so many obstacles. Only a few of our circle were active in collecting the donations in the past. So, as a team, we faced so many barriers in collecting donations. First and foremost was rejections. Many of the persons and the organizations rejected our proposal. Even though we weren’t demanding any fixed amount. But we never lost hope. Every day, we went with a new determination. Secondly, our members Maham and Fatima were not so active on LinkedIn and Twitter in the past. So it was pretty hard for them to manage it. But still, they did their best and cleared this barrier in a couple of days and raised the following of the pages very soon.

Sustainability:

As I already mentioned at the very beginning of my blog, It’s not a matter of a month or two. It will take years to achieve our goal. So, it should be sustainable too.

For that purpose, we come with three strategies.

1- We already set some backup donors who will be paying us on a monthly basis which we will use as our routine expenses and the already collected amount will be saved and used in case of vice versa situations.

2- I placed some boxes in my family to collect Sadqa amounts on monthly basis. Which will also help us to concrete our goal.

3- We, as the circle members, decided to contribute personally to this noble cause every month.

Future Plans:

Just like RRF Karachi, we have planned to enhance our projects and we’ll be working in other domains as well e.g. Ration Drives, Helping with equipment, Medicines, and any other help which we can offer. In Sha Allah!

So now you can understand, why I wrote my title PURPOSE IN LIFE. Because we finally found it 😊