TCF Greater Sacramento Chapter Fundraiser a Resounding Success
By Ras H. Siddiqui
The Citizens Foundation USA-Greater Sacramento Chapter held a well-attended fundraiser at the SALAM Community Center on Saturday, February 26, 2022. This was TCF Sacramento’s first big event since COVID 19 appeared on the scene two years ago and we hope that programs like these will continue to be held as the pandemic becomes an endemic and eventually goes away.
For those who may not be aware, Pakistan has quite a few challenges, and access to and delivery of quality education to millions of children, is certainly one of the biggest. Yes, there are other efforts out there in our community which are doing great work on a smaller scale in the country like DIL, HDF and a few others which should be commended and encouraged, but TCF generates a soft corner amongst many Pakistani Americans due to the sheer size of the effort and its dedication to the advancement of the female population in the country. It is no secret that educated women lead to educated and productive families and their empowerment remains a must for the success of countries globally.
The evening began with emcee Asif Haq calling everyone’s attention and thanking everyone for their support and dedication to the education of underprivileged children in Pakistan. He next invited young Mustafa and Khadija Muhammad to open the formalities with a recitation from the Holy Qur’an and its translation. Asif returned soon after and introduced us to the schedule for the evening which under his vigilance was followed without any major hiccups besides a troublesome microphone.
The first person to speak was Javed Iqbal, one of the founding luminaries of the TCF-Sacramento. Javed shared a brief history of the local chapter which is now in its seventh year of operation. He said that after hearing about TCF in the Bay Area he did his due diligence and decided to pursue this path. The TCF -Sacramento leadership is indebted to Amjad Noorani from the San Francisco Bay Area Chapter and TCF-USA along with Asghar Aboobaker, Laiq Chughtai and Asad Mohiuddin for bringing the TCF effort to California’s capital city. This writer recalls the first meeting in Roseville in 2015 which was covered in this esteemed newspaper. Credit goes to Javed himself along with Arshad and Nadira Alvi for taking this group forward to its current success with help from Omar Malik, Asif Haq, Meer Nazeer, Aqil Abbasi and Khalid Siddiqui plus a handful of others. Javed Iqbal during his short speech also introduced the book “Agents of Change” on stage written by Amjad Noorani and Nadeem Hussain which reflects on the TCF story and a great deal more. Anyone interested in education in Pakistan should acquire and read this book. Javed also announced the inclusion of Junaid Khan to the Sacramento TCF-Sacramento team and appreciated his assistance in holding larger fundraising events in the future.
Meer Shams Nazeer next gave a very professional slide presentation on TCF as a whole and the achievements of the Sacramento Chapter in particular. He focused on four questions: 1) How to eliminate poverty by educating people who are stuck in the cycle of abject poverty? 2) How to empower women to uplift the whole of society? 3) How do you help with charity resources to provide modern advanced education without compromise? 4) If you can do all this, then how do you scale and take this to masses? Meer next went into addressing these questions with a TCF focus and explained how the organization is impacting lives in Pakistan which has the second largest population of children out of school in the world. TCF has been around for around 26 years. It is currently educating close to 275,000 children in Pakistan in 1687 schools without compromising on quality. Half of the students are girls and TCF is one of the largest employers of women (all teachers) in the country. Approximately one-third of the financial support of this huge effort is being provided by TCF-USA chapters. The Sacramento chapter is currently supporting 5 schools, employing 49 teachers and helping to educate 762 children, reported Meer. He also provided details of the chapter finances over the years and revealed that target for the fundraising this year was $150,000. To our pleasant surprise Meer Nazeer ended his presentation with a few choice words of inspiring Urdu poetry written by Faiz Ahmad Faiz.
The Keynote Speaker at this event was Salam Al-Marayati President and Co-Founder of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Founded in 1988, MPAC is a national American Muslim advocacy and public policy organization based in Los Angeles with offices in Washington, DC. It has taken some public stands which have made it controversial but its fight for Muslim inclusiveness in mainstream American life has been quite noteworthy. Starting on a humorous note, Salam said that he was happy to be at SALAM. He noted a Triathlon analogy to our comparative struggles to understanding our Islamic faith and the way that we look at the Holy Qur’an as believers. He stressed the fact that the Qur’an was for everybody. There were differences between the trained and untrained viewpoints on it. He said that the Qur’an was for all thinking people and that it was the property of, and for the people, and as we educate ourselves on it, we can counter extremism.
On the TCF effort Al-Marayati added that it was promoting goodness, justice, and charity through education. He said that in our religion, we are commanded to do social good and to pursue learning. On a closing note Salam condemned the use of the term Infidel, the practice of misogyny and the use of violence within some minority Muslim groups and stressed that American Muslims are a part of the solution to counter extremism. He ended his speech quoting from the late MPAC leader Maher Hathout (1936 – 2015) on how gaining education is the best way forward.
The fundraising which followed at this event was a relatively short segment conducted by Javed Iqbal and Arshad Alvi. And one cannot overlook the nice dinner served.
To end this report one can only praise TCF which is trying to make a big difference in the lives of struggling families by educating their children in Pakistan. Let us all remind ourselves that the main reason that most of us could become productive Americans and were able to raise our families comfortably in the United States was the strong base of education that we received in Pakistan. One Pakistani doctor’s family at this event donated $10,000 (Thank you), which would not have been possible without the education received in the home country. The same goes for the engineers. Sir Syed Ahmad Khan was once quoted as saying – “Ignorance is the Mother of Poverty.” Like MPAC his views too were once considered controversial. But he has been proven right. A good education can certainly change lives dramatically for the better. TCF offers that hope for many in Pakistan.
