Nurturing and creating access to meaningful volunteering within schools has always been one of Volunteer Karachi’s most important goals. Having worked through 2012 on translating this vision into practical, useful resources with tangible ideas, it was time to take it into educational institutions who were committed to encouraging a spirit of ‘real’ ownership among their student volunteers – challenging them to go beyond their usual activities to really thinking about how they could invest their time more meaningfully to the act of even fundraising for a deserving cause.
Our team worked with the school to suggest and facilitate volunteering programs that not only make a positive impact on the community being helped but also instill important values of social responsibility, proactiveness and citizenship that endure in younger members of our society.
Volunteer Karachi’s first partner in this initiative was Haque Academy who came on board as soon as this initiative was launched in 2013! To date, they have gone through two cycles of the initiative, with immensely successful results.
In the first cycle which ran in the first half of 2013, students volunteered their time to ‘creatively’ raise funds for donating to Patients’ Aid Foundation towards the provision of post-operative antibiotics for patients at Jinnah Hospital. How did they achieved this ambitious goal and through organizing what kinds of fundraising activities is best explained by one of the participating students himself. Below, read Awais Khalid’s narrative of the first cycle of activities at Haque Academy.
“Believe you can and you’re halfway there” –Theodore Roosevelt. With this belief came the formation of the Haque Academy Community Service club; a small group of passionate students who wanted to help and make this community a better place for everyone.
On 26th February, Ms. Saman from Volunteer Karachi conducted a workshop for the Haque Academy Community Service club at Haque Academy. All the club members came together and listened intently to what Volunteer Karachi had to offer. She told us about Volunteer Karachi first, and then we discussed fundraising goals and brain stormed new creative ideas for fundraising. In the next few days we decided which fundraising goal we wanted to take up and started working towards achieving it.
We knew that raising money would not be easy but we were ready to take on the challenge. The first fundraising activity we organized was a Creative Story Writing Competition. We placed two flip charts in the middle of our school ground during break and wrote down the first sentence of a story. Every student could contribute to the story by adding one sentence to the story. For each sentence they were requested to make a small payment of a specified amount. We ended up with two absolutely hilarious stories and everyone enjoyed the activity.
The second fundraising activity we had was on a bigger scale than the first one. An in-school movie was organized after school for the students. Tickets for the movie were sold and the event was open for all Haque Academy students. Two movies, “Mama” and “The King’s Speech” were shown at the same time in two different rooms and a lot of excited and ecstatic students showed up. Popcorn was also sold at the event and all the students enjoyed themselves and felt their contribution to the cause had been worth their while and money!
On the same day, we also started selling Haque Academy customized t-shirts. The t-shirt had Haque Academy’s mascot printed on the back with a slogan and was available in ten different colors.
It was an exhilarating experience and taught us many lessons. Every member of our club realized the important and essential role we play in society. We learned how to make commitments, and more importantly how to fulfill these commitments. And, lastly we realized the importance of perseverance and hard work (and at the end of it, all of us had also learned a lot of Economics ;p).
I, Awais Khalid, President of the Haque Academy Community Service Club, am grateful for the opportunity given to me by Volunteer Karachi and I hope to continue my work with them in the future.
After such a rewarding experience of participating in the first cycle of this innovative experience in school-based volunteering, Haque Academy students couldn’t wait for the next cycle which launched in the 2nd half of 2013! This time, they challenged themselves with another goal – to fund a deep freezer required by the SOS Children’s Village in Malir. To achieve their fundraising target, they again planned out and implemented a series of activities beginning with the sale of customized hoodies to the school community. A bake sale was also organized followed by a unique strategy for fundraising – collecting old newspapers that were then sold to a recycling source. The proceeds of the customized hoodie and baked goods’ sale as well as the sale of old newspapers collectively helped the students achieve their goal of funding a deep freezer at the SOS Children’s Village!
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