A Page From The Diary Of A Social Internee

Nov 18, 2013 by     Comments Off on A Page From The Diary Of A Social Internee    Posted under: Act Of Kindness, Expressions

Reaching ten minutes before the scheduled time, 4 pm, my friend and I wandered the lanes of Naheed Supermarket analyzing the crowd and making predictions of how much money we would be able to raise today. To be honest, we were quite pessimistic to see the crowd there, especially considering the amount we did end up raising, and hence kept cursing ourselves for not choosing a more burger place as they say, even after numerous suggestions made by the SWO President himself.

Only one of the guy from our team was on time,which according to Pakistani definition is of course ten minutes late. The three of us decided to wait for the rest of the group to come so that we could split into teams and begin doing what we had gone there to do. However, after five minutes of making small talk with each other and awkwardly staring in the space, I decided we better get to work when I spotted an aunty who I was sure was a definite catch. And lo and behold, our first donator spared us 500 rupees! Our spirits rose immediately but were soon dampened when several aunties turned us down or simply walked by the entrance ignoring us.

We decided that the entrance was in fact not the best point to ask for donations. So we headed to the exit and opted to stand in the scorching sun, much to the displeasure of our fair-skinned friend, Sharmeen. We continued to approach people coming out and going in and while some would gladly spare a 100, others would simply walk by ignoring us. There were some who spared as low as 10 rupees, God bless their souls and their wallets so that they may think beyond that crumpled up ten rupee note in the back pocket of their jeans!

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Our first major breakthrough was when we approached an uncle with his daughter, only a little older than us and told him about our cause. He mistook our project’s name “Illumination for Hope” as the HOPE organization, of which he was one of the prime contributors.  After explaining to him that we were from Solarization Welfare Organization rather than HOPE and Illumination for Hope is actually the name of our project which is focused on providing solar lamps to underprivileged students, we were honestly not prepared for what came next. The generous uncle, may Allah bless him and this time I really do mean it, took out a 1000 rupee note and shocked us by saying, “This is just because I don’t want to discourage you young people and to say thank you for working for such a cause!” We were humbled and ecstatic simultaneously and I personally had to control my happy dance mode since that was the first 1000 of the day we had seen, and most probably the last. But more excited than us were the little kids outside Naheed trying selling drawing books or simply begging for money and upon seeing the uncle donate a 1000 rupee note, they exclaimed with joy crying “Unhon ne hazaar rupay dediye!!!”

In the end, we were able to raise 5500 rupees MashaAllah, all thanks to the efforts of our amazing team. The SWO team intends to do another fundraising soon as we definitely believe in the cause we are working for and we would go at any lengths to support it; and yes, standing in the scorching sun while fasting, trying to coax people to donate some money with your throat going all dry, is indeed the definition of going to great lengths, but we will gladly do it for the inner satisfaction it gives us!

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