Challenging Problem Solving Skills to Accept Failure: Edhi Funds Collection
Everyone knows about Edhi and his contributions. After the death of Edhi, it has been difficult for sons of Edhi to get maximum funding as people have not been so generous as they were for Edhi Sahib.
We, at Amal, were given a task to collect funds for the Edhi foundation. There were two reasons for this task:
- Collect funding to support Edhi and bring awareness among people that keep supporting Edhi
- Our own learnings from failure to achieve our target.
- Everyone’s experience with this activity.
In this blog, I am going to write everything that our group planned and worked on. I will also talk about unexpected events, failures, and lessons from this experience. I would reflect every member’s two cents on this activity. Let’s dive in.
Experience of collecting funds for a social cause
The experience was full of lessons and gratitude. We learned that you have to use everything you can do to make any project successful. Collecting funds from people virtually was a difficult task but everyone believed in the cause.
It was always in our minds that we are doing it for good. It does not matter how much we collect. What really matters is, how much effort and dedication we put in this work and how you faced your challenges.
Our Strategy
We all knew about the current situation. So, we had a meeting and decided what can we do to make it successful. It was individual plus group effort.
As we were collecting funds on behalf of Amal, we can not openly ask on social media platforms because we did not have the proof for Edhi’s Foundation. We devised a strategy and collaborated with circle 8 to get a better outreach. We decided to target our own social media and connections where we will use our payment accounts to collect money.
Although this strategy would give less amount in our accounts, it was the right one considering legal restrictions. We prepared different posters, templates, and utilized them in the best way possible. We even requested our connections to even spread it in their own circles which eventually helped us too.
How we tackled challenges?
Productive paths are never easy. One has to be determined and persistent while pursuing such a path. In our campaign, we did face some challenges and those are:
1. Unavailability of some fellows because of exams or some genuine personnel reason.
2. Justifying the credibility of us that we would give the funds to the Edhi Foundation.
3. Investing time to manage this campaign along with our daily routine.
4. Cold response despite all the efforts
We tried to keep the work continued with what we had available. We kept on knocking the doors until someone had helped. I noticed that mere spreading in groups and putting on our stories was not helping us.
Today, I along with my team reached around 400 people individually and spread our message. Consequently, we achieved even beyond our thoughts. I would like to thank the untiring efforts of my circle members. Everyone did what was in their hand to make this work successful. This is how we reached everyone individually:
Assalam u Alaikum!
I hope you will receive this message in best of your health and spirit. As you might know that we, along with the collaboration of Amal Academy, are raising funds for Edhi Foundation. Edhi Foundation has been facing critical issues related to donations after the demise of Edhi shb. I would highly encourage you to donate for this cause. Even a 100Rs would highly be appreciated. You will be rewarded in this life and life hereafter too. JazakAllah!
For Donations:
JazzCash: 03024358436
Poster for sharing on social handles
We designed a poster to spread our message in our circles. This is how we approached our circles:
“No religion is higher than humanity”
~Abdul Sattar Edhi
After the demise of Edhi Shb, Edhi Foundation has been facing critical issues regarding fundraising. We along with the collaboration of Amal Academy are raising funds for this foundation so that Edhi Foundation can keep on working for humanity. Since we all are humans, so please support us in this initiative.
#Servehumanity #ServePakistan
Accepting failure
Sometimes things don’t go as they are planned and you have to accept failure and take full responsibility for the task. It happened in our case. Despite all the above efforts, we were only able to collect a few 100s. This was alarming for all of us.
We thought we had to do something and find a solution. And we found it. We planned to try again and convert a few 100s into 1000s and we were able to do that.
Although, the amount is not big from our side as compared to other groups we did what can. Most of our circle includes jobless and therefore a donation of 10, 20, or 30 could not take you to 1000s. It was a fact and we had to accept it.
Pictures from the activities
Here we are attaching a few photos. Our goals were to convert to donate to Edhi. Either it goes from us or directly to them.
Final Collection
“No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person.”
As per our resources, the efforts we all put on was certainly commendable. There was a time that our donations got stuck in between and I was afraid that we won't be able to collect more. But I realized that you always won't get what you anticipated and you need to accept it. Failure is not a bad thing but overcoming your failure and learning from it is something we should do. We as a team kept our nerves, did what we could and eventually achieved beyond our thoughts. Below I have attached the picture depicting the final amount we were able to collect.
