Due to the lock-down brought on by coronavirus, many workers in Pakistan are struggling to earn a single rupee in weeks. As a result, entire communities are going hungry. The pandemic exposed our worst anxieties and fears, but also brought out a spirit of generosity among fellow countrymen.
Recently, two individuals, Azeema Ilyas and Syed Faizan Raza Rizvi, started running a daily ration campaign on social media.
Rizvi is a Islamabad-based Design Researcher for social and developmental projects at a human-centered design firm, while Ilyas works as a Young Parliamentary Officer attached to Parliament of Pakistan.
Speaking to Images, Rizvi says,
“When the lock-down measures started around three weeks ago, a couple of friends reached out to help with their fundraising. I had built a decent social media following through the community projects I had done over the years so I had periodically raised funds for different causes.
He reveals why this coronavirus relief fund was bigger than anything they have done before. Here’s what he had to do this time to ensure that his appeals were heard all over social media:
But this time the scale was much bigger so I had to do more than just share their posts and try to really engage people in the movement. There were all these fitness and push-up challenges that sprung up on Instagram, and I got the idea of using a similar gamification technique to push people to donate for ration drives across the country. That’s how #TheRationChallenge started.
The idea was to do multiple fundraising challenges. Each challenge had a minimum target to achieve for a specific drive. Once that target was achieved, I moved on to the next challenge. These challenges were carried out on Twitter and Instagram.
And what about Azeema ilyas?
Azeema came on board early on too and helped execute it alongside me through the following she had as a photographer. Throughout each challenge, we kept updating people on the amount raised and how much was left through our social channels. This is what kept people involved, and how we often had the same donors donating twice and even thrice because they wanted us to complete the challenge.”
I know we have almost exhausted our personal resources and contacts, so I need everyone seeing this to retweet so it reaches people we haven't reached yet.
🚨
TFP community needs minimum Rs. 200,000 urgently for ration for families on the outskirts of Isb.DM to donate.
🚨— Faizan 🇵🇸 (@thoraoffbeat) April 6, 2020
Through the help of their friends, they achieved their targets that ranged between collecting Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 75,000 daily.
In just a few days, many new influencers were able to distribute these funds to places all over the country. Together they established a website and named the campaign/fundraiser EhsaasKaroNa — the “Karo Na” part being a play on the words ‘Corona’.
They even set up a PayPal and Venmo donation option for folks living abroad who want to contribute.
Within five days, they managed to raise Rs. 1,885,179. Half of the funds are allocated for ration drives and the other half for purchasing personal protective equipment for the medical workers working on the front-lines.
Rizvi says that as they posted about it on their social media stories, and much to their surprise they managed to get the attention of many well-known faces, both at home and abroad. To name a few, Matthieu Paley, a National Geographic Photographer; Jahan Yousuf, one half of the Krewella, the popular EDM duo; and actors and models Sajal Aly, Ayeza Khan, Minaal Khan, Sadaf Kanwal, Ainy Jaffery, Eman Suleman, Sohai Ali Abro and Mansha Pasha.
It is great to see such a helpful initiative during these hard times. We should all do our part and contribute as much as we can to help out the poor during the pandemic.
Would you be donating to the Coronavirus Relief Fund? Share your thoughts on the comments below.
via Images
