Student + collection box = food for thought

KARACHI: Whether it is at the Sunday Bazaar, the Forum Mall, Delawala Shopping Mall or the main traffic signals in Defence, these kids are everywhere.

College students and soon-to-be professionals have geared up and have vowed to make a difference. Armed with collection boxes, banners and the national flag, these young heroes are going around Clifton and Defence collecting donations from “people who can pay” for the flood survivors of Sindh.

Bachelor’s students in their last semesters at the College of Accounting and Management Sciences (Cams) and Greenwich University have been skimming across the city for their monetary donation drive.

“We’ve been collecting donations since Friday and the response has been tremendous,” Komal Dawani, a business student at Greenwich, told The Express Tribune. “We are a total of 20 volunteers and this is basically an initiative by the students of the last semester,” she explained.

So Zohaib Sikandar, Humayon Saleem and Mudassir Munir gathered their friends and went up to the university administration, asking them to help with the noble cause.

They work in organised groups. They even have a ‘uniform’: white Greenwich t-shirts, blue jeans and their university ID cards round their necks. During the donation drive, they split into groups of four — two girls and two boys — and went to different locations. After their weekend donation drive, they had collected Rs400,000 in just three days.

“We will buy flour, sugar, lentils and medicines for typhoid, gastroenteritis and skin diseases,” said Komal, adding, “We plan to pack them in individual packets per family and deliver them ourselves to Dadu and surrounding areas with our university administration.”

How will they go to the flood-affected areas... they have that problem sorted out as well. “Our administration has talked to the army and we will most probably take everything through the army trucks.”

But students of Cams are relying completely on themselves and their contacts to ensure relief goods are provided to flood survivors in Karachi and interior Sindh. Vinay Ahuja and his friends and friends of friends formed a volunteering group of 70 people.

The group spread across the city and collected donations till Tuesday — a staggering Rs600,000. Vinay and his group collected all the money by going to places in Clifton and Defence, with collection boxes wrapped up in paper with their university logo.

These students, also last semester students at Cams, are constantly in touch with army personnel, Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI), Citizens-Police Liaison Committee (CPLC), Ziauddin Hospital and individuals helping flood survivors. “The FPCCI is guiding us and helping us in understanding need assessment, transport and security issues. They have promised us to transport the relief goods to the affected areas,” said Vinay.

This group actually started the good deed by providing food for 40 families in Sherpao Colony, Karachi. These families were being housed by a relative of one of the group members and his resources were exhausted. So these young helpers went to help.

“Our aim is to send 20 days of rations to the flood-affected areas,” claimed Vinay.

How will you locate the survivors and those in need? “A person working with a TV channel is helping us identify the affected villages and areas. We will go with him.”

About what their parents think of their initiative, Vinay said his parents are very supportive but some of his friends’ parents think they are wasting time. “But that didn’t affect the drive much because this is so worth it.”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 25^th, 2010.