MUSLIMS & SOCIETY

The Bazme Niswan Charitable Trust disbursed scholarships to 1,500 girl students at an impressive function held at the Samad House here on July 9. Cheques for amount totaling Rs. 40 lakh were distributed by several dignitaries who were invited for the function. President of Bazme Niswan, Ms. Husna Sheriff said the organization pays the entire fee for the first year girl students of courses like BE and MBBS. From subsequent years, the Bazm undertakes to provide them stipends of Rs. 10,000 for the MBBS, Rs. 8,000 to the BE, Rs. 6,000 to the Dental, Rs. 3,000 to the Degree, Rs. 2,000 for the PUC, Rs. 5,000 for the Nursing, Rs. 5,000 for the computer application courses. Ms. Sheriff said the Bazm raises donation to the tune of Rs. 80 lakh during Ramadan every year. Of these, nearly half is disbursed by way of scholarships while the remaining half goes for marriage of poor girls, health schemes and social welfare. She said Bazm was started by Ms. Sadathunnissa Begum in 1964.

Ms. Husna Sheriff was also presented with the Dr. Mumtaz Ahmed Khan Award for the social service for the year 2008.

Edhi, founder of the Edhi Foundation, a non-profit social welfare organisation will travel across Pakistan to raise funds and donations to feed some one million hungry people all over the country.

With a cropped white beard, a worn traditional Pakistani dress and the small basket filled with money, Abdul Sattar Edhi’s appearance looks striking, but not for people in Pakistan, where Edhi is on a heroic begging mission to feed one million people across the country. “I am begging to feed one million people who cannot afford meals,” says Edhi, the Pakistani famed philanthropists and social worker. Edhi, founder of the Edhi Foundation, a non-profit social welfare organisation which has been working to help Pakistani needy for the past five decades, embarked on his begging mission on June 19. He will travel across Pakistan to raise funds and donations to feed some one million hungry people all over the country. Accompanied by his wife Bilquees, his son, Faisal, and his daughter, Kubra, Edhi began his journey from Baluchistan, the country’s poorest province.
The Edhi team already passed through Punjab, the richest and most populous province, the north western frontier province, which borders Afgh-anistan, and southern Sindh province. All in all, they have covered a distance of 3000 kilometers so far.

Edhi says the cost for feeding one million people is about Rs 1bn ($ 15m). Edhi says he began his mission knowing that there are so many people in Pakistan who can not even afford a descent meal. “I totally understand that millions of Pakistanis are reeling from extreme poverty,” he laments.
According to official statistics, the poverty rate is 28 per cent in the South Asian Muslim country of 170 million Independent estimates, however, put the number at 40 percent.
According to the World Bank and the UN Development Program (UNDP), nearly one-quarter of Pakistan’s population is classified poor as of October 2006.

Amidst the grinding poverty, soaring unempl-oyment and political and economic instability, a growing number of Pakist-anis commit suicide. A government study last April found that 4 people commit suicide every day. “We don’t want any person to commit suicide just because he cannot feed himself and his family,” says Bilquees, Edhi’s wife.

“It’s hard for them to see their children crying for food, and milk, but still there is no justification for committing suicide,” her husband agreed. In Pakistan, Edhi, who has been running charity work for more than five decades is considered a national hero.

For many who eat at Edhi’s meal centers around the country, the man is more of a national hero. Over the past five decades, Edhi Foundation’s grew from a single free maternity centre and nursing school in Karachi to branches spread all over Pakistan.

The Foundation also runs a number of other humanitarian operations, including hospitals, morgues and schools. According to the Guinness World Records, Edhi Foundation has the largest private ambulance service network in the world.

In Karachi, the organisation maintains about 40 cradles. It has 350 others throughout the country, sheltering around 50,000 children.

( By Amir Latif, Islamonline.net )