Megaproject Blog 2-Action Against Hunger

“Believe you can and you’re halfway there”- Theodore Roosevelt

The endless amount of efforts, remarkable potential, and smart planning of our circle members approaching us closer to our mega project. To present our whole performance till yet before a formal audience and to put the best of our abilities is very exciting as well as demanding.

As we had described, in the previous blog, our every step about the formation of Helping Hands in a very detailed manner so our attention will be to focus on what actions we have taken to lead our project ahead and to attain its maximum sustainability.

Till the last blog, following our timeline, we completed the task of spreading awareness. We created social media pages, create awareness door to door. Through non-profit activities like the distribution of rice boxes, we spread awareness of helping others and distributing food to others. We decided to arrange a webinar to spread positivity and awareness to people about how they can think and care about other people. To tell people how we can altogether remove hunger in Pakistan. And we gave people a platform “Helping Hands” through which they can be a part of this noble cause.

Our Progress:

• In our next step, to strengthen our online presence and present our objectives to a wider audience, we invited members from our network to follow us on both social media platforms & also requested them to invite members from their circle. Thus, In this short interval, we have built over 100+ audiences on our accounts.

We successfully arranged the webinar in which we spread positivity and awareness about the current situation of Pakistan due to hunger to the 60+ participants. Provided them a platform of helping hands where they can’t only provide funds for needy peoples but also become a part of this noble cause by volunteering and helping us out in finding needy people and collecting funds.

Our fundraising strategy helps us a lot in collecting funds for needy people. We all came out of our comfort zone and went door to door collecting funds. We also made banners and charts so we can represent our motto, our purpose to the people. It really helps us a lot to show a positive image or a noble idea to everyone. Many people appreciated us and agreed to help us in every situation. Most importantly our struggle for collaborating with an organization or a company succeeds. We reached out to “Suzuki Motors” and convinced them through our pitch, we represent our purpose, our motto to which they really appreciate and are committed to helping us. That was the most exciting or proud moment for all of us.

Through fundraising and by collecting individual funds we succeed in collecting more than 20,000+ rupees through which we can easily support 2 families and give a startup business to a needy family.

• One of our circle members, Ehtsham, found a deserving family in his hometown. The person did his best to support his family but unfortunately due to a financial crisis, he couldn’t do that. After verifying all the information and looking at his previous background, we decided to help them and we will provide a food bag this month.

• Alhamdulillah! As we have collected 20000/- donations so far that are, and, will be used to help the deserving and willing families to meet their expenses. We made up food bags and bought all the necessary items to provide to needy families.

Challenges & Solutions:

Challenges and problems are a part of the journey. We believe that there’s no accomplishment without struggle. We as a team also faced some challenges but the most important thing is that despite all problems, we remained determined and focused on our goals. We would really like to share some of the challenges and our strategies to tackle them.

1. Identifying deserving families: The most challenging work for us was to identify and verify the needy families, and to ensure whether there is no one in their family to support them. For this purpose, we defined a criterion that includes some basic parameters, e.g., to inquire about the source of income, total family members, school-going children, utility bills, picture of living place, and the previous record of the family. These criteria helped us a lot in verifying the families that were needy in a true sense.
2. Approaching organizations: Another challenge that we faced was to approach and convince organizations and companies to accommodate needy people. In the beginning, we approached some schools, to convey our idea to students and to welcome them as a volunteer in our organization. They listened to our idea but were not willing to help us. Then we decided about using our network and went to the other NGOs. This strategy helped us to convince the other organizations because they are already doing this type of work. Gradually we convinced companies like Suzuki motors, built our social media pages, and shared our success stories, it will become easier for us to convince other industries as well.
3. Fund Collection: People were refusing to donate. As it’s not an easy task to convince someone and donate even 50 rupees. So we follow some techniques to increase our donations:

• Bootstrapping; we started from our own personal savings
• Reach out to friends and family; asking our friends and family for their financial support, those closest to you is often a good first step before getting external funding.
• Getting out of our comfort zone and collecting funds door to door, by approaching different shopping malls and markets.
• Social media campaigns; by uploading stories on social media platforms on a daily basis
• We also did research about big brand companies which are doing a lot of charity i.e. Sitara Chemicals, Suzuki Motors LTD.

Impact/ Outcomes:

Helping Hands is serving society by facilitating food bags for the families who will become the healthy and wealthy families of our country. We are providing the best of our capacity and alternate solutions for their problems. We will accommodate and help families which will result in making a wealthy Pakistan where every child will be able to get an education, children would stop begging and make their time more productive in education. People will spend their earnings to meet other needs rather than food.

Future Planning:

Sustainability for a project is very crucial to yield long-lasting impacts. Helping Hands also aims to sustain the project and in this regard, we are trying to accomplish the following tasks to maximize our suitability.

1. Finding deserving families
2. Sponsorship
3. Give a business startup
4. contracting with a food charity organization like “Rizq”