Challenging your problem-solving skills to accept failure:
Goal: Be the helping hand and serve humanity. (Fund collection for Edhi Foundation)
“Empty words and long praises do not impress God. Show Him your faith by your deeds”
― Abdul Sattar Edhi
Abdul Sattar Edhi was born in 1928 in a small village of Bantva near Joona Garh, Gujrat (India). The seeds of compassion for the suffering humanity were sown in his soul by his mother’s infirmity. When Edhi was at the tender age of eleven, his mother became paralyzed and later got mentally ill. Young Abdul Sattar devoted himself to looking after all her needs; cleaning, bathing, changing clothes, and feeding. This proved to be a losing battle against the disease, and her helplessness increased over the years. Her persistent woeful condition left a lasting impression on young Edhi.
Even at this early age, he felt personally responsible for taking on the challenge of developing a system of services to reduce human miseries. With the support of some members of his community, he decided to establish a free dispensary. He became involved in this charity work. More donations were received as people’s confidence in the activities of the Trust grew. With the passage of time, the masses gave him the title of the” Angel of Mercy.”
Edhi involves himself in every activity at Edhi Foundation from raising funds to bathing corpses. Round the clock, he keeps with him an ambulance which he drives himself and makes rounds of the city regularly. On finding a destitute or an injured person anywhere on the way, he escorts him to the Relief Centre where immediate attention is given to the needy person. Inspite of his busy work schedule with the Foundation, Edhi finds enough time to spare with the residents of the orphanages called “Edhi Homes”.
So, last week we got an activity to raise the funds for the “Edhi Foundation”, We fellows at Amal Academy have taken initiative to contribute to this humanitarian goal, but due to Covid-19 we are unable to go outside and ask for donations so, we solved the problem and started to ask donations through different social media platforms by circulating posters and different posts.
Although our task activity is still going on and as per expectation we are growing our social circles everyday and being active socially, and every member in the circle has shared their reflection notes according to their whole week’s progress.
- How was the experience of collecting funds for a social cause?
We don’t live in a perfect world, and there’s never going to be a perfect time to give, but there are always people out there in need of help but through this experience, we felt that being sympathetic is not enough we have to be empathetic. Empathy allowed us to build social connections with others, we experienced, by promoting helping behaviors, we are becoming more likely to engage in helpful behaviors when we feel empathy for other people.
b. Did you collect funds individually or in a group? How was it different?
We are working in a group actually, but collecting it separately due to Covid-19 we can go outside in a group and ask for donations, so it made us find an alternative way to overcome the problem, and we are circulating posters on our social media accounts and asking from our friends and family members to forward them as well.
c. What challenges did you face? And how did you overcome those challenges?
The main challenge is to convince the people, and for that, we have to come out from our comfort zone and other issues we are facing like remote working, Some of us are facing the challenge to talk to others, some are facing the challenge to find people who could contribute and challenge of rejection as well. We are using our problem-solving skills and trying to sort issues out.
d. How has this experience helped you in accepting failure?
It’s like we are developing skills to be able to handle rejection in a way that helps turn a ‘no’ into a ‘yes’. Practicing being rejected making us put more effort for the next time from learning the previous experience.
This whole process would not be possible without each member of the team
Kainat Mustafa
Sadaf Afreen
Mudassar Rafique
Shahrukh Hussain
Mohammad Saqib
Ahmad Adnan Chattha
