Azaad Pakistan: A candle in the storm

With the quotidian struggles of an average Pakistani comes some frustration and one begins to question whether anything good will ever come out of the country. If you have had one of those days let us introduce you to something extraordinary.

Let us introduce to you Azaad Pakistan. Azaad Pakistan was formed in 2013 and is a student-run community that serves as a platform. It has gained much success and popularity over the three year period.

Why? This organisation has raised an astounding amount of “16 million rupees” for charity projects to date for Pakistan and abroad, making it one of the largest platforms in Pakistan over such a small period of time.

This was the beautiful idea of some young enterprising individuals from the city of Sialkot. The platform has 5 co-founders; Saif, Mahnoor, Sajeel, Roshanay and Ghalib.

It dawns from the dream of the self-independence of a country where people have the right to bring something positive into the lives of their fellow men and women, an idea that claims there shouldn’t be something stopping you when you are out there to do good.

The story of Azaad Pakistan starts in 2013 with a hashtag trend, a Skype call and a rainy evening in the city of Sialkot. The hashtag was a part of a Coke campaign; 14 acts of kindness for Pakistan. The trend bubbled around the 14^th of August and this is where these kids decided that Pakistan needed more than just 14 acts and more than just once.

They claim that they started off with around 12 people and with the right investment in time are now around 600 people spread all over Pakistan. To date, it has carried out 84 projects, has partnered with 5 organisations, has roots in 90 institutes and all on their own busy student lives.

So what do they do? Let us suppose you have an idea, something you feel needs aid, something you’d much rather fix in your city, region or neighbourhood. You pitch the idea to them and you get plentiful human and other resources for the implementation of your thoughts.

Azaad Pakistan co-founder Ghalib Khalil from Beaconhouse National University claims that the platform has one headquarter and that is their ever-growing Facebook group community. He says by making such easy access they are able to relieve people of the hassle of filling forms and going through inconveniences when all they want to do is help.

He says he has observed this in other charity organisations and made a point to make his platform an accommodation for such people rather a nuisance. You join the group and you are a part of the family.

While talking to Ghalib, we were thoroughly in awe of the good work they have managed to pull off in a span of three years. Students as young as 14 years of age, inductees of Azaad Pakistan have collected huge amounts of money for the education of kids from poor backgrounds, around 1.5 lac was collected in 3 months. Another young hero from LGS Shahjamal collected large sums as well.

The student-run platform has managed to make impressive fundraising, from collecting “2 million rupees” for the Thar crisis in  just 20 days to collecting 1.5 million for the Syrian refugee crisis.

When asked about their current projects, we found out that an amazing campaign is underway that concerns the vocational training of trans-genders and fund is being collected to make them independent and to enable them to earn.

We wish the team all the best and hope to see more of them in headlines.

Long Live Pakistan!