ALL EYES: The gathering witnessed Education for All programme activities in a short video.     Photo by Umer Nangiana

By Umer Nangiana


They surprised even the hosts. Overwhelming participation from members of the Pakistani community helped their premier welfare organisation to collect funds well exceeding its initial budget estimates for the year.
Once again responding to the call for donations by Pakistan Welfare Forum (PWF), an organisation working under the patronage of Pakistan Embassy in Qatar, the community members helped raise QR2,050,000 to be spent on community welfare and relief work in the year 2015.
At the start of the fundraiser dinner hosted by the forum on the Pakistan Embassy premises, the PWF targeted a collection of QR2 million to meet its budgetary demands for the year 2015. As it launched the appeal for donations, contributions poured in from every corner of the packed house.
Businessmen, engineers, doctors and even students rose to the occasion and added their share to the cause. Most of the donations came in the form of cash while others pledged to pay for the education of underprivileged children of the community. Many also promised to fund the construction of water wells for the people of water-starved desert area of Thar in Sindh province of Pakistan.
“We do not go to individuals outside the Pakistani community for funds. This community welfare work is our collective responsibility and I strongly believe that we are capable of raising any amounts that we need to, as you have proven it today,” Muhammad Idrees Anwar, member of the Founder Executive Council (FEC) PWF, told the audience.
PWF’s meeting its budgetary demands received a huge boost with healthy contributions from its partners such as RasGas, raf Al Thani for humanitarian services Qatar and Ezdan Mall besides some Qatari nationals who did not want to be named.
“We have a budget of QR2 million. Most of it is used for education and we have also started a few new projects. One is Special Education where we will be spending more than QR100,000 a year. The other is a vocation training centre where we will provide skill development training to youth, enabling them to earn respectable livelihood,” Riyaz Ahmad Bakali, the President of PWF, told Community.  
Allocations have also been made in the new budget for three new sectors including legal, medical and family welfare support, he added.
Bakali said the forum has so far helped more than 500 students, over 100 families, 40 medical cases and two legal cases. He said that the organisation has also helped people in Pakistan in the time of need particularly, during the floods of 2011-12 and the Balochistan earthquake besides starting a project of building water wells in Thar. PWF also donated Rs10 million for Internally Displaced People IDPs of tribal areas of Pakistan.
Bakali said the PWF has managed to engage the community through a trust relationship. “The community knows very well that our efforts are sincerely directed towards their welfare. We make sure that we reach out to those who need us,” he said.
“We have developed a trust between PWF, other partners and community and this is the prime reason that the community has pledged QR2 million in just a few hours long campaign,” he added.  
The continuous community support is ensured through the fair and transparent conduct of the organisation through its structural clarity. The structure is such that PWF has an FEC which has 300 odd members coming from different walks of life, different schools of thought and different areas of Qatar, he told Community.  
Similarly, there is a Steering Committee that changes members every two years. Members from all provinces of Pakistan are given chance to become President of the organisation. For instance, if the first was from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the second from Punjab, third from Sindh (Bakali himself), the fourth will be from Balochistan.
Similarly, the other office bearers are a mix of people belonging to different geographical areas of Pakistan. PWF also takes its members from different cities of Qatar like Umm Said, Dukhan, Al Khor, etc. They also stay connected with other community leaders and a meeting in this regard was organised in January this year.
Through its various programmes for education, PWF is supporting hundreds of students to receive quality education. Besides paying the fee for 170 students admitted in different schools of Qatar, PWF through its ‘Education for All’ programme is putting out-of-school children back in school regardless of their age.
“Education for All means education for those children who are socio-economically deprived, who have never been to school and who have no chance to go to school unless they are helped and Pakistan Welfare Forum (PWF) provides them this support,” Ahmed Hussain, the FEC member of PWF, told Community.
“It brings them to school, prepares them for schooling and then transfers them to regular schools — funding their education all through their schooling years,” he added.
So far they have about 400 children in their programme. However, he added that an incomplete effort at finding out the number of children who are out of school yielded a thousand such children.
“The Supreme Education Council (SEC) told us that they have a data of more than two thousand such children. I think this number is even higher. So the Ministry of Interior is helping us collect data for out-of-school children, so that we know the exact figure,” said Hussain.
He said the PWF found the data about children only from Pakistani community although they have children in their programme from six nationalities. “We are catering for all communities, not just Pakistanis. We aim to educate all children who are out of school whatever their nationality, background and community in Qatar,” said the FEC member.
Hussain cited two main reasons for these many children being out of school. These are social and economic — mainly, the latter. “In most cases, it is the parents who are not able to pay the fee for the children, or even for the uniform and books for their children,” he said.
“Let me give you an example. We did a survey on this. If say, a driver earns QR2,000 a month and has four children, it will be difficult for him to even feed the kids. Remember, he has to pay the house rent, etc. as well,” Hussain conjectured.
Then, there are social reasons. For instance, illiteracy in families through generations. He cited the Baloch Colony children as an example. Their parents have been living in Qatar for three generations, arriving some 40 years ago. But in their colony, there is no education for children, he added.
He said the PWF has full faith and trust in their ability and the capacity of the community to keep the programme going. “You have seen today, our target was QR2 million and we achieved more than that. Last year, we targeted 1.5 million and we managed to raise QR1.6 million,” said Hussain.
Over and above, he added, they get support from other institutions like RasGas or Ezdan Mall, although they have not employed any marketing campaign as yet.
Anybody who hears about this programme or goes and visits its implementation is more than convinced that it is genuine and an excellent effort to engage community to educate children who would never be educated otherwise, concluded the FEC member.