Rashidabad: Beginning Charity at Home

Several hundred kilometres away from Karachi near Tando Allahyar, there exists a major complex spread over an area of more than a hundred acres which includes schools, hospitals, housing and recreational facilities and goes by the name of Rashidabad. The people of Karachi may not know much about it but it is a facility that any Pakistani would be proud of.

Built across the Rashidabad train station, a six to eight hour traveling distance from Karachi, the project has been undertaken with the aim of catering to the needs of the under-privileged and disadvantaged children, particularly orphans.

Construction officially started in December 1998. The chief mentor and operating head of the board of trustees, Rashidabad, Air Commodore (retd) Shabbir A. Khan first disclosed the idea of the project during a discussion with a former general manager of the Pakistan Railways and long-time friend, Iqbal Samad Khan.

Commodore Shabbir, fought in the 1965 and 1971 Indo-Pak wars and feels that “Rashidabad is a miracle of God.” He calls this a miracle because according to him, not all the orphans of the world or of this country get a chance to live, study and socialise in such a healthy environment. Foster mothers are also being employed so that children as young as four or five years can get personal attention.

Irrespective of race, religion, language and ethnic background, all children in the hostel and the orphanage are provided equal opportunity to prosper. This, according to the management, helps in creating a pluralist mentality as they also learn the core values of intellectual diversity and tolerance for those who think and act differently.

The provision of quality health care, education, accommodation and recreation facilities is the hallmark of Rashidabad. All these can usually be availed free of cost. The monthly expenses of Rashidabad are completely funded from charity money and donations made by individuals, families and charitable institutions within the country.

The Rashid Memorial Welfare Organisation (RMWO), the main organisation behind Rashidabad, has also been working with other welfare trusts and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) on various projects such as schools, hospitals and accommodation facilities that have been and are being erected within the premises.

The Citizens’ Foundation (TCF), an NGO, has a school inside Rashidabad. The Mustafa Benevolent Trust (MBT) has been involved in the construction and maintenance of the orphanage as well as the main water purification plant that has been put up there.

The orphanage is named Amzi home. It is a five-storey building that can accommodate nearly 288 people, including 32 senior citizens. It is being built at a cost of more than $1 million.

Elevators will be running on all the five floors. This will ease mobility for the senior citizens who are to be accommodated here. Each room at the Amzi home can accommodate up to 12 children. Also, this new orphanage will enable the board of directors at the RMWO to increase their school capacities, as the rooms on the top two floors of the Khawaja Yaqub House, one of the school buildings, will now be available for conducting classes. The current occupants of those rooms will be shifted to this new accommodation facility to be completed in 2008.

Iqbal Samad Khan, a former general manager of the Pakistan Railways and chief volunteer at Rashidabad, told The News about the involvements of the Shehnaz A. Ghani Trust and the Layton Rahimtoola Benevolent Trust (LRBT). The main hospital of the premises that has been under construction for more than a year will be given to the Shehnaz A. Ghani Trust for the day to day running and maintenance. The hospital plans to include state-of-the-art medical facilities.

Khan further went on to talk about the new special eye hospital, which is the brainchild of the LRBT. This will be completed by March 2008. The eye hospital has a capacity of giving medical treatment to about 300 patients a day, including 50 operations. All this will be done mostly free of cost. Volunteer workers including Khan told The News that Adeeb-ul-Hassan Rizvi of the Sindh Institute of Urology Transplant (SIUT) will be making a visit to Tando Allahyar in order to meet the authorities at Rashidabad to finalise the costing.

So far, three schools have been built. These include the Yaqub Khawaja (YK) Academy, TCF School and the Sargodhian Spirit Trust (SST) Public School. Collectively, these schools have the strength of 950 students.

In all the three schools, “reasonable stress is laid on the learning of the English language,” according to Commodore Shabbir. According to Samad Khan, a volunteer at Rashidabad, “there is no concept of tuitions.”

The overall success of Rashidabad is basically based on two broad fundamentals. First is the provision of a home-like environment to the orphans who come from all over the country and belong to different cultures and backgrounds. Second is the fact that as Commodore Shabbir puts it, the workers and the management of Rashidabad have studied the various education schemes announced by the outgoing government and its predecessors and learnt from their mistakes. According to Commodore Shabbir, “All these past projects were politically motivated and therefore had many shortcomings.” One major problem as outlined by the retired Commodore is the unavailability of basic amenities like clean food, water, clothing, accommodation, quality health care and infrastructure and sanitation facilities, along with the imparting of off-the-cuff education that has seemingly no practical or intellectual importance today.

The vision of the RMWO is clear and their commitment is strong. The achievement of all the pre-set goals and objectives certainly bodes well for those whose life is attached with Rashidabad.

Syed Maaz Mansur, an A-level student who visited Rashidabad last year, told The News, “A few more schools such as this will help in decreasing the poverty levels (in Pakistan) and will give the country a better future.” It is institutions like these that can ensure that children from poor families, orphans or not, rather than being sexually or commercially exploited in the society go through proper schooling and attain the quality education that is their right.