Challenging your problem solving skills to accept failure

6 min readJan 15, 2021

“With great power comes great responsibility” is a saying that applies to all who are fortunate enough to have a roof over their heads and always have food to eat, good clothes to wear and have someone who look after them. There are many who are not fortunate enough to have these luxuries of life. Hence the initiative of gathering funds for Edhi Foundation which is one of the organizations that has been working towards providing these necessities to needy people. It is to continue the mission of Edhi Sahab, he made sure the funds for the organization came from the people of Pakistan. The activity is to makes us realize that rejections and hurdles are part of life, it will only turn it into a failure if one stops trying. It is a testament of Amal, by taking an initiative to go out there and gather funds from people you may not know and gather funds from a few while facing a rejection from many.

“Sadaqah is a proof.” (Narrated by Muslim in hadith no. 223)

How many people reached out?

More than 500 as a group combined

How many strangers donated?

How many family and friends?

Organization/Business donated

Dolpharel- Donated clothes worth Rs. 4000

General Stores Rs. 100

Total Amount Rupees 6480/-

Experience

It was an activity to collect donations for Edhi Foundation. We were asked to collect donations from anyone we can access for example friends, family. Even we have to contact strangers and businesses for donations and that was quite challenging. It was an activity to get out from the comfort zone and it was something we all have to deal with.

There were different steps during this activity and we all gone through the process of Amal, Khudi, Kaam Kaam Kaam and Aik or Aik gyara. We all did a session and we decided the goal of this project and make it SMART

S- To achieve more than Rs. 5000 as donations

M- By calculating the amount donated by donors

A- Every member of circle to contribute atleast Rs. 1000

R- By contacting in close circles, we will be able to meet objective

T- Two weeks

Where the answers to some questions are diverse, we thought it would be a good idea to include the answers of every teammate.

How was the experience of collecting funds for a social cause?

Umair- With an experience of working in social sector, it was quite difficult to collect funding this time due to Covid protocols. When I went to Edhi Foundation with clothes donated by Dolpharel Brand and some money. I was so happy to see that they are providing opportunities to women too to run the foundation. She collected money and clothes from me.

Ali Ahmed- The experience of gathering funds was somewhat not as good as it should be due to many restrictions of Covid-19 along with some unfortunate recent events that forbids me to visit organizations and nearby places in person.

Hafsa- As a social activist, it was not my first experience to collect funds for any foundation in such away. A week ago, Amal assigned us a task in the group to collect funds for Edhi Foundation. Despite so many rejections, humiliation, sarcastic remarks, I felt satisfaction. I learned how to control emotions particularly ego and shyness, initially, it seemed like I would not be able to do that job .

There are many takeaways from this activity. I learned how to ignore failures and think critically to make new strategies in order to get more good responses. How to manage grudges when others are humiliating and never give up. After collecting money, for a social cause, an indescribable happiness infiltrates me always and the feeling will remain forever with me, as I find that to work for other welfare provides you immense happiness.

Saleha- Experience was good. I have approached to my family members so they agree to give me amount the collective was 400/- although I have also approached to strangers and friends but due to distance I have not time to collected to them but they promised me that they donate the amount soon.

Fahad- We are so busy in our life that we forgot sometimes that how blessed we are. We are fortunate enough to have all the luxuries of life. However, there are people, who don’t have necessities of life and they are always looking for our help. In addition, for this, we start collecting funds for one of the largest welfare, Edhi foundation. This charity collection helped me to experienced many things, like the real experience of helping others, and most importantly, how hard it is to collect donation for these peoples. My respect for this organization is increased, after experienced this activity.

Ali Haider- Indeed, it was a good experience of my social work life. I learn a lot from this activity. Initially I was hesitating to ask fund from others but after some time and work that EDHI Foundation. Doing motivates me and I love to continue this work more.

Sameen- This was honestly a very positive and fulfilling experience because while collecting funds from family friends I realized this effort is for something positive and rewarding.

Did you collect funds individually or in a group? How was it different?

We all collected the funds individually as everyone have different schedules and family issues. Although we decided that we will do that group activity as individual in our own locality by visiting small businesses and asking them for donation.

What challenges did you face? How did you overcome those challenges?

The challenges we all faced were that people were ignoring the posts most of the time when I was approaching them online. Some said that they already pay to their nearby Mosque or some other reputable organization that works of the same cause. Even small businesses we approached were refusing to donate. There were very few who donated.

How has this experience helped you in accepting failure?

Umair- We might face different issues in life, there might be difficulties but we have to keep on trying. In the end, we will get more than we expected.

Ali Ahmed- The experience has indeed helped me learned that not everything in this world is sunshine and rainbows. That I need to face a “no” or “yes I’ll do it later” (which is also a no but a delayed one) even when I on the right cause. It pushed me to keep trying regardless of how many noes I was getting and that helped me in the end.

Hafsa- This experience taught me how to accept the failure, do not lose hope, struggle hard, and try again so you will achieve what you want. Facing failures is a big problem and I always accept them, take lessons from them, and analyze the issues where I am lacking and make them better.

Saleha- I think due to lack of that skill that I am not convinced people properly in a good way as every people has his own perception so it is difficult to understand them so in this way this experience helped me in accepting failure as it is due to that my approach was not good . So I learned that I have to use different strategies to make them people realized.

Fahad- When there is not a single response on my status, I was totally broken that no one is going to come forward and helped me in collection. Afterwards, when I accept this behavior and go for the small amounts in personal messages. It helped me to collect some amount.

Sameen- I realized failure is part of the process and that it means that we are actually trying to do something and eventually we can succeed

Ali Haider- Initially it was bad experience and I was sad and disappointed.