I am Mohammad Mazahir, the president of Idara Al-Khair welfare society. I belong to a middle class family. I was born in District Dadu of Sindh Province in the year 1954. After getting education from Govt. School and College in Dadu City, I shifted to Karachi and completed my education from the University of Karachi by securing Master Degree in Chemistry. Being sensitive in nature from the very childhood, I always remained worried about the environment around me, especially the conditions and deprivation of poor families. I remember helping the poor as much as I could, sometimes even giving away my own pocket money so that they could meet their immediate needs.

When I shifted to Karachi at the age of 18 for further studies, I came across a few philanthropists and some social organizations who, observing my potentialities, invited me to join them and perform social work for needy and less privileged people. Thus, I actively engaged myself in social welfare activities, particularly in suburb and slum areas like Orangi Town, Landhi and Korangi. Initially, the social services conducted by me were mainly confined to material help like the supply of flour, beans and vegetables and other household items to the families who migrated from East Pakistan after the 1971 war. I also supplied sewing machines to poor wives and widows to the displaced families, and books and stationary to young children. On the eve of Eid-Ul-Azha and other national days I would distribute meat and other gift items so that they would not feel isolated and deprived on those festive events. I continued such welfare activities for a considerable time. However, despite of my efforts, devotion and dedication, no change was coming up in the people’s mind and character. Their thinking and attitude was more inclined towards a beggary style of life rather than that of self-supporting. Men and children, even women, were indulged in antisocial activities and evils. The only solution was education; hence, I planned to establish a school for this purpose. I surveyed several backward localities of Karachi where the parents and children possessed no concept of education. Incidentally, I came across a big community living in a slum area in New Karachi known as Mustafa Colony, which was barely surviving due to lack of basic civic facilities. It comprised of a community of people which were mainly labors, hawkers, waiters, maids, factory workers and many other jobless people. The general atmosphere of the colony was full of evils like drug addiction, robbery, child labor, gambling etc. There was no school in this area. As such, the literacy rate of the population of this area was almost nil. I started a primary education school made up of just one room by hiring a hut/jhuggi in that area and admitting 2 students who later became 10 in number; currently, the total strength of our schools is nearly 2500. I faced and managed to resolve many issues during the journey of bringing Idara Al-Khair from scratch to the school that we see today:

i. At the outset, the most difficult task that I faced was to convince the parents of boys and girls to allow their children to join the school for education with no financial burden on them as all books and stationary will be provided to the children free of cost. This was unbelievable for them.

ii. The poor parents demanded compensation for taking away their children for schooling, as their children were financial assets for them in the shape of child-labor.

iii. The main problem faced and still being faced today is that well qualified teachers are either not ready to work with us because of the location of our projects, or demand high salaries to join us. However, due to our limited funds we are unable pay salaries as demanded by them. Hence, we try to get the maximum output from the existing lot of teachers.

iv. At times, whenever some economic crisis occurred in our country, it would affect the working of our school. Most of the guardians / parents would pull their children out from the school and force them to do jobs and earn livelihood for the family. Sometimes, students would decide to leave the school themselves; this increased the number of drop outs.”