LAHORE: Shahid Afridi Foundation (SAF) and Green Crescent Trust (GCT) charitable alliance received massive support of Lahore’s business community for the schooling of at least 10,000 out-of-school children.
The third joint fundraiser of SAF and GCT was held here on Friday. It was the first time the charitable joint venture between the two charities stepped outside Sindh to expand their drive to educate children of the backward areas of Pakistan.
Leading Pakistani sports and show business celebrities, including Anwar Maqsood, Adnan Siddiqui, Shahid Afridi, Jahangir Khan, Ahmad Shahzad, and Shahbaz Senior, attended the event. Leading names of Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry, Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry and other trade bodies of Punjab attended the event.
On the occasion, the memorabilia belonging to the sports celebrities were also auctioned to raise money for the charitable cause, besides the business community announced donations for the joint charitable drive.
Akhuwat Founder Dr Amjad Saqib donated Rs 2.5 million for the charitable school education campaign and also announced to join hands with the cause of SAF and GCT.
While addressing the event, SAF Chairman Shahid Afridi said that he owed much to Pakistan for the name and fame he earned, as his non-profit had been working in the education sector as an effective mean to pay back to his motherland.
He expressed gratitude to the businessmen and philanthropists for lending him fullest support to carry out a number of welfare activities under the aegis of SAF.
GCT CEO Zahid Saeed said that the joint charitable campaign required the support of the concerned philanthropists from all over the country, as the enrolment of millions of out-of-school children was a gigantic task.
“The GCT had been acting upon its Vision-2025 to enroll total of 100,000 out-of-school children by increasing the number of its charitable schools to 250,” he added.
It may be mentioned that the two non-profit organisations joined hands in 2018 to work together for the education of the children of the deprived communities. Both the charities have been jointly running eight schools having an enrollment of 3,000 students from the backward areas of Sindh.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022