By Sanna Malik
We started this a year ago. We pledged to bring out a special issue every year and donate its proceedings to the Latif Kapadia Memorial Welfare Trust – LKMWT for short – the institution formed as a means of endowing Sadqah-e-Jariah to the great comedian, actor, a lover of life and arts, and what very few near and dear ones know him for; his tenderness towards humanity.
Resolute in our pledge, we shall be handing over the amount that we generate from this issue of Synergyzer to LKMWT for the three MediHealth Clinics – written as MH from here on – and Montessori school functioning under its aegis. The clinics are located at Shah Faisal Colony – MH1, Malir Khokrapar – MH2 and Saleh Muhammad Goth near Quaidabad – MH3. Currently, MH1 has a general outpatients department (OPD), an emergency ward, ultrasound services and dental clinic while planning is underway to set up a laboratory for medical testing at MH2 along with the outpatient clinic that is operational there. MH3 on the other hand, carries out vaccination besides general OPD and ultrasound services as well as housing the Montessori school, which at present has 65 students enrolled. While the patients may be charged a nominal amount for the checkups and medicines dispensed to them, the school is free of cost for the children of the necessity-challenged community residing at Saleh Muhammad Goth including their uniforms, books and the juice and biscuits that they get as a token for making happen their right to education.
Under the motto of ‘Sehat Aur Taleem Sab Kay Liye’, the managing committee of LKMWT is continuously on the lookout for sites to start more clinics, continue dispensing quality medication, increase healthcare departments and functions at the already operating clinics, arrange for x-ray machines, provide for books and uniforms for the ever increasing number of students at the school while setting up more schools and educating parents to let their children relish the right to education, besides making sure the already operating areas continue working. All this requires funds, setting and resolving to achieve bigger goals needs more.
It is human nature to get the satisfaction in giving when the efforts are visible in any endeavor to bring the change one wants to see it achieve, big or small. Go a step further and you start realizing that equipping people to a promising future is always rewarding. The vision counts and ambitions have a way of growing on you, not to mention these lay the ground for the structure and discipline that our society needs to see. It was this belief and the commitment to a broader vision that kept us committed to our pledge of a year ago.
Says the Quran, “O you who believe, you shall give to charity from the provisions we have given to you, before a day comes where there is no trade, no nepotism, and no intercession.” [2:254]