Cricket legend Shahid Afridi has appealed to the Sindh Government to join hands with him in his drive called “Educate a Child”. The famous cricketer turned philanthropist made this appeal in a joint statement along with Zahid Saeed who is the CEO of his partner charity Green Crescent Trust (GCT)
The SAF has been running the eight charitable school in Karachi enrolling 2400 underserved students for over two years in collaboration with the GCT that in total runs 150-plus charitable schools in Sindh having an enrolment of 29,000 children of the needy families.
“We have been working in the education sector for the past six years while the GCT has 26 years’ experience of educating children of the backward areas. So we as an alliance have the combined experience of 32 years to educate children of neglected areas of Sindh,” said Shahid Afridi in the joint statement.
“Our alliance has the earnest desire to work with the Sindh government for this noble cause,” he said “We have been imparting education to children of the neglected parts of Sindh for past 26 years but past six months have been seriously challenging for us due to the economic setback caused by the pandemic as the survival of genuine charities like the GCT becomes a challenge,” said GCT CEO Zahid Saeed in the statement.
He hoped that concerned corporate sector and philanthropists would once again come forward to make sure that there would be continuity of education of 29,000 underprivileged students enrolled in the schools of his charity.
The global sports and charity star Shahid Afridi said that he was glad that the alliance of SAF and GCT had been working in the most neglected and backward parts of Karachi as more efforts should be made to educate children of such areas. “The more quality schools are built to educate children of the deprived areas, the more talent we will have for the national development.”
“We have the will and resolve to adopt as many government-run schools as many we can to upgrade them including Ibrahim Ali Bhai School in Federal B Area from where I did my matriculation,” said Shahid Afridi.
He also appealed that the government and private schools should religiously follow the government-recommended Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) against the spread of coronavirus as any leniency in this regard will create irreversible damage to the health of students and teachers and also to the cause of education that already has been under massive stress for the past over six months due to Covid-19.
Afridi, who is the Chairman of SAF, said that if the schools didn’t follow the SOPs, then there would always be a risk that the government had to once more order closure of the educational institutions if they emerged as a source of the spread of the coronavirus in Pakistan. He said that strict observance of SOPs would also be necessary because any violation of the Covid-19 safety precautions would endanger the health of millions of students, their families, teachers, and other school staff. Also on occasion, he appealed to the concerned donors, philanthropists, corporate sector and well-off persons to come forward and wholeheartedly support the joint charitable drive of SAF and GCT to educate children of the needy families in Sindh.
Zahid Saeed Said; “We have been sharing the burden of the state and the government as we strive hard to enrol out-of-school children in Sindh who are in millions so every resourceful person or organization, which wants progress and development of Pakistan, should support us with open heart.