LAHORE: The Lums Flood Relief Drive Hi-Tea was a fund raising event hosted by the students and faculty of the Lahore University of Management Sciences and included the Vice Chancellor, faculty members, CEOs of prominent companies, and members of the Lums Flood Relief Drive council.
Lums Flood Relief Drive is a joint initiative by the students and faculty members of LUMS, with an aim to rehabilitate, educate and to empower the flood affectees on a long term basis. Work has already been started in two villages:
Kararinoon in district Bhakkar, and Bhaksar in District Rajanpur. LFRD aims to help the needy by building houses for the affected people, with larger projects such as schools planned for the future. The proceedings started with an introduction about the LFRD by Dr Rasul Bakhsh Raees, a professor of political science at LUMS, and also a member of the LUMS Flood Relief Drive.
“The LUMS community, particularly the students have strongly felt that we have a social responsibility to help these families who were rendered helpless after the floods. At first sight we thought that they needed simple goods such as food and clothes..but later we realized that we need a social transformation of the entire village community to give them hope and build on their capacity to lead dignified lives by developing skills, learning, education and improved methods of agriculture.
Our vision and mission is much larger in the sense that we aim to stay engaged with rural communities by adopting villages. The purpose is to bring the affected people back on their own feet by knitting them together into a community and developing a spirit among them to address their local issues with minimum external interventions.”
Dr Qinza Najm, also a faculty member from LUMS as well as the LFRD added:”Gandhi is right when he says that you have to be the change that you want to see in this world. To help your brothers in need and to take an initiative, you have to start from within. The flow of energy cannot be compromised with the passage of time, for you have to keep the progress of social change going, and it must not stop.
This is what the students from LUMS have done, and still are doing. They are the future of our nation, and steps like these are the social change that will act as a hope for others, instilling an urge to help and to keep the energy flowing.” A resident from the village of Bhakkar, where LFRD has already completed 14 solid houses, who had travelled all the way to Lahore, came to the stage and had to offer some kind words full of kindness for the students of LUMS.
Rasul Bakhsh Raees then conducted the formal pledging proceedings and invited the distinguished guests to donate houses and pledge monetary donations.
