Mega Group 3’s Donation Run

Shah Rukh

The overall experience was quite satisfying as for years I have planned to do donations, but to be honest, I never really did any. At least, this project forced me to do something that I had planned.

Our strategy was simple. Set up an easy paisa account, and make a poster. Promote that poster around our social media accounts and get donations. We also planned to set up two donations boxes at different shops as well.

While the project was group, we individually contributed as all of us live in different areas. What we did was, we individually tried to contact our family and friends. For donations to bank account, we were using Mujahids bank account and for easy paisa, we were using Umair Jibrans. The pool was a group pool, but we as individuals were gathering funds.

The challenges that i faced was when i learn that in DHA shop keepers are reluctant in placing donation boxes. That is because army personal have a habit of meddling in other peoples business and they keep harassing shop keepers if a donation box is placed. Another problem I face was finding donation boxes as they are not sold in shops.

It took me one week to look for donation boxes, after i couldn’t find, i made my own donation box. I wrapped a blender box with wrapping paper and than posted printed sheets of the donation name on it.

Below is my DIY Donation box.

As it took me an extra week, I have decided to keep this donation box at the store for one more week and than report the money i generated through this after a week. I will add the money generated from that into the comment section of this report.

Another problem that i faced was that i wasn’t able to get donation funds from my friends as they gave excuses. Thus, what i did was, i started a clothing donation run. My friends were able to give their left over clothes. I donated these clothes to edhi center. Below is the pic of receipt

I learned that whenever you are not able to pull of something, keep a back up plan. I knew if I wasn’t able to get a donation box I will make my own from cardboard. If I cant place the donation box in DHA, I will place it in some shop in Mohalla. If I cant donation funds from friends, I will do a clothing donation run as it also contributes as well.

However, as for able to get one business working with our donation fund and not the other, that was indeed a failure on our part. Maybe in future I should coordinate better with my team.

Mujahid

It was a pleasant experience for me to collect funds for the social cause. I learnt to talk to others for donation. At first, I was shy to ask for money but after sometime I feel okay with it.

I collect donations individually. It was difficult to collect funds individually as compared to in teams collection. People give more value to the team because they can trust on more people rather than individual funds raiser.

I live in Village. Here, very less people know about Edhi Foundation. Then comes the trust issues. Why would someone give money to stranger? That Question make me feel discouraged. So I prepared myself for that.

I convinced people about donations .

This experience help me to communicate to stranger about funds. Sometimes I feel like I am not convincing people to donate.

Umar Jibran

This was a great experience collecting funds for a social cause, not “a” social cause but The Social Cause because Edhi Foundation has been there for Pakistan through Thick & Thin, either be a bomb blast or an earthquake Edhi Foundation was there before the media (and it is something to mention), the media is here to generate income and Edhi is there to save people without any expectation of income.

We collected funds as a group as well as individually, we set up an easy pasia account that was used in the same poster made by me. I individually posted our poster on my WhatsApp status, on my facebook profile as well as on my Twitter profile hoping to collect as much as I could, I was supposed to install donation box in a shop as well, but because I was extremely under the workload of university I failed to do that, and I stand responsible for it.

First and foremost personal challenge for me was posting it on my personal facebook/twitter profile because I have never before asked money for a social cause in which I stood a middle man thinking everyone will think of me as a scam, but I did it anyway and now I intend to do it periodically because it was the first time, and now I know I can do it again and again and again.

This experience helped me accepting failure because I now know that failure is a state of mind, it’s not permanent. I just needed to take a step, I did.