ChildLife Foundation Holds Impressive Event in Sacramento
By Ras H. Siddiqui
Education in Pakistan has The Citizens Foundation which has taken over a number of struggling government schools, improved education there, and has been providing kids from financially challenged families an opportunity to learn in quality classrooms. Similarly, the ChildLife Foundation is engaged in a large-scale effort, but its emphasis is on children’s health. It has succeeded in successfully transforming or upgrading the children’s wards of many running government hospitals, thus improving the quality of services that they are able to provide all over Pakistan. In other words, they have been able to save the lives of many little ones, the future of our country of origin. And although most of this effort has been funded from within the country, a growing percentage of financing is being generated from within the overseas Pakistani community through fundraising events like the one held in Sacramento, California on Tuesday March 7, 2023.
Held at the Platinum Room of the Town & Country Event Center in Rancho Codova, the fundraiser drew quite a large crowd for a Tuesday night. And it started on time too though some attendees did come in a bit late (including this writer). Upon entry I heard event emcee Khydeeja Alam (who did a great job here) introducing and calling Dr Rana Mahfooz Ali Khan to the stage as first speaker. Dr Mahfooz offered a short introduction to the Sacramento ChildLife effort including an event which was held last year to start things off in this region. He then proceeded to introduce the local host committee team that made this all possible consisting of Dr Wajahat Khan, himself, Dr Mutahir Khan and Junaid Khan plus the spouses of all of them. He thanked everyone for attending and said that without their support this program would not amount to anything. He also asked the attendees to make themselves familiar with the ChildLife Foundation and thework that they have been doing in Pakistan by visiting their website ( https://childlifefoundation.org/ ).
Next up was keynote speaker Ahson Rabbani, the CEO of ChildLife Foundation. Mr Rabbani came extremely well prepared and delivered a very detailed and absorbing slide presentation driven speech. He said that ChildLife is currently saving lives in 120 government hospitals in Pakistan. His starting slide showed the geographic distribution of ChildLife’s hospital presence in Pakistan. He added that every district of Sindh and Baluchistan is now covered. This services almost half of the land area of the country. He called this the half-full map or the Alhamdulillah part. But there is still half of Pakistan left which he termed as the Insha’Allah part. He asked the audience to pray that ChildLife will eventually be able to tackle the other half and work in up to 500 public hospitals in Pakistan to cover all of the country. Today, we treat up to 1.5 million children there (through ChildLife) free of cost, he added.
With a follow up, Ahson proceeded to answer the question “Why ChildLife?” He said that we should be supporting other efforts too no doubt, but one key criteria here is the impact. And not just in one hospital but in a large enough area to make a system level change. We are covering about 1/3 rd of the population and hope to cover the other 2/3 rd, he said. He also elaborated on how ChildLife reached this point and where it is going from here. Ahson added that one of the greatest miracles in life is childbirth, and the greatest tragedy is child death. How can we prevent child death? Especially in Pakistan where annually, approximately 400,000 kids do not reach their 5 th birthday.
Rabbani said that we have two choices: 1) To be indifferent, and 2) Do something about it. He added that health is a very difficult area to address. When ChildLife started out people asked “You want to work in a government hospital?” They followed up with: it would be better to commit suicide! But ChildLife’s path to success was its focus on the children’s wards at the government hospitals. Rabbani gave details (and showed pictures) of how they were able to improve the conditions there, and how. One must admit that the positive change looked dramatic. It costs just $7 to treat one child there, he said. But the need remains great and that is where our financial assistance comes in.
A short CNN video made in 2010 after the floods in Pakistan featuring Dr Sanjay Gupta was also shown. This video became a motivating factor for the birth of the ChildLife Foundation. Rabbani had a great deal more information which cannot all be presented in this one article here. But one needs to share how we the donors and ChildLife’s workers earn one of the greatest rewards there is in this life. That reward is the prayers of gratitude from mothers thanking us for saving the lives of their children.
The fundraising began with the assistance of Dr Mutahir Khan and was assisted by others including venue owner Waqar Khan. It did not last very long, and dinner was served soon after. And just before the entertainment segment, Dr Rana Mahfooz Ali Khan was presented a “Thank You Sacramento” token of appreciation by Ahson Rabbani for efforts made on behalf of ChildLife Foundation.
Entertainment at this event was provided by Pakistani Pop Star Ali Haider. He was here in Sacramento about five years ago when he headlined the Pakistan Independence Day celebrations. It was good to see him again in California’s Capital City along with Facebook Friend Vincent Lawrence, CEO at Ritz Entertainment who manages and promotes several top Pakistani singers. Ali Haider acknowledged Vincent at the beginning of his performance and then proceeded to belt out several of his own and historical hits made famous by now departed Pakistani singers including Madam Noor Jehan, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Amjad Sabri and Junaid Jamshed. A high point here was when Ali Haider sang Dil Dil Pakistan without any music in memory of Junaid and the audience participated wholeheartedly, especially many of the ladies present.
