ISLAMABAD: A charity bazaar offering food and handicraft stalls by various embassies, local arts and crafts as well as performances was held on Saturday to raise funds for Pehli Kiran School and the Care for Special Persons Foundation (CSPF).

The Charity Bazaar 2019 was hosted by Islamabad Foreign Women’s Association (IFWA).

IFWA was established in 1995 by women of the diplomatic corps and expatriate communities in Islamabad, its president Mookda Mairue said,

adding: “It aims to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by underprivileged and disadvantaged women and children and to raise funds for their benefit.”

The guest of honour, Benazir Income Support Programme Chairperson Dr Sania Nishtar said: ”This event is much needed at a time when our country

is going such trauma because of the waves of terrorism we’ve had recently, because of the waves of terrorism in Sri Lanka.

“These are opportunities when you have to strengthen your resolve to stand up once again. So, thank you for organising this event at such an opportune time.

“I also want to thank you because this is such a wonderful demonstration, not only of local Pakistani arts, culture, talent and entrepreneurship, but it also brings under the same roof the culture and crafts of the missions here in Pakistan, and for such substantive causes.”

“Poverty alleviation and reaching out to the marginalised is not something the government can do on its own. It has to be through partnership with the civil society, with the business sector and we are trying to develop the right architecture for that,” she added.

The CEO of CSPF, Hina Hasnain, explained that her organisation serves “physically and mentally challenged children by training and educating them through computers, speech therapy, physiotherapy and address learning disabilities and make them independent to the extent possible”.

CSPF’s stall had items made by students foundation.

“There are 25 million children out of school in Pakistan with growing concentration in urban slums,” said Pehli Karan School trustee Shahnaz Kapadia.

She said: “For us, Pehli Kiran is a model which is scalable and replicable. The unique features of the model are that we take the schools to the communities, the child comes to the school at an early age, retention is increased through quality education and the co-curriculum programme is unique.”

A series of performances kept the visitors engaged between bouts of shopping, including a Chinese Fan Martial Arts display, the traditional Indonesian Peacock dance, and short acts by students of Pehli Kiran and CSPF. The Pehli Kiran students had prepared a short skit on how they, like everyone, had dreams but the reality for children in slums was very different.

Firas Hamdi from the Cosmos Infiniti stall had unusual acrylic artwork on display.

He said: “We are an in-house lifestyle brand. We have a wide range of paintings, resin tables, river tables, coasters, trays and much more.”

One of the main attractions was the raffles draw with prizes like full board stay at the Bandos Island Resort in Maldives, a Thai Airways return ticket from Islamabad to Bangkok, a two-night stay at the Shangrilla Resort in Skardu, and more.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2019