Dear readers,

We at PakFellows.com have always tried our utmost to provide you music and entertainment absolutely free of cost, for which we are very thankful to all of our members for their support. Today, PakFellows.com needs your help and requests all it’s members to join hands with us on a new venture, not for our personal benefit, but for the benefit of the innocent kids of Pakistan.

I have the honour today to introduce to you all Mr. Faraz Sheikh. A graduate of Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) and currently a Ph.D. candidate at Indiana University, Faraz is a founder member of the Society for the Advancement of Education (SAVE). SAVE is a US-based non-profit corporation founded by students and young professionals to serve the educational and economic needs of the poorest village and street children across the globe. He is currently working with the Lahore Welfare Association (LWA) and is in need of our help. He conveys the following message to all his fellow countrymen.

“Dear Fellow Pakistanis, Assalam-u-alaikum.

We need your urgent and generous help.  We at SAVE Inc, an organization formed by students and professionals of Pakistani background around the world, are starting a high-quality free primary school for the poorest street and village children of Pakistan in Charar village Lahore. The school is set to start on September 1st, 2008.

We aim to provide them with free daily meals, free books and stationary, free clothes and uniforms and shoes, free medical care, monthly need/merit based stipends and most importantly, a free English-medium, private-school-quality, work-based education that will qualify these street children for jobs as well as higher education. We are making job-placement as one of our top priorities. We are focusing equally on both boys and girls. According to our best estimates, to do all of the above, we will have to spend approx. $2000 per month for a school of 200 children i.e. $20 per child per month.

In addition to these operational costs, we need around $4000 in order to purchase books, furniture, hire and train teachers, rent a school building and cover other one-time, fixed expenses. We need to make these expenses NOW so that the school can be ready to start in September.

In the near future, we hope to expand this primary school into a technical/vocational training institute. We hope to develop our vocational training program in active cooperation with business and industry in Pakistan so that our students’ skills will be useful and well-suited for the demands of Pakistan’s thriving job-market. We also plan to expand the primary school into a secondary school with classes for boys and girls up to grade 10. We hope to institute a scholarship program for students who wish to pursue higher education.

The street and village children of Charar are sons and daughters of poor immigrant families who have moved to the cities from villages across Pakistan in search of work and a better life in recent years. Their parent’s work as domestic servants or are engaged in petty jobs and the children are either used as helping hands or are left to fend for themselves during the day as beggars or street-sellers. We want to give these children a chance to fulfill their potentials and dreams and become responsible, educated and earning members of their families and communities. Please help us by donating what you can. Visit our website www.educationsaveschildren.org for details about the project and about the ways you can donate/help. Please spread the word and encourage others to donate for this cause. We don’t have much time as the school starts September 1st, 2008. Please donate now!

Let us not wait for an earthquake to happen before we decide to help these poor children of Pakistan. A slow and mighty earthquake is underway. For everyday that these children spend out of school begging on the streets, their dreams and hopes fall to the ground one brick at a time.

Yours humbly,

Faraz Sheikh”

PakFellows.com earnestly requests all of its members to donate generously for this noble cause, which we fully support. Please donate generously and forward this message to as many people as possible. For further details, please visit the SAVE website at www.educationsaveschildren.org or feel free to contact us at the addresses below.

Faraz Sheikh <fmasoodsheikh@gmail.com>

Dr. Abdul Basit Saeed <saeed@pakfellows.com>

Similar Articles at PakFellows Blog: