PEOPLES WELFARE FOUNDATION

Societies and states succeed where people keenly watch their rights and perform their duties honestly and sincerely. To keep in mind this statement, Mr. Nadeem Yousaf, grandson of Allama Mashriqi and nephew of renowned social worker Akhtar Hameed, and his colleagues have established Peoples Welfare Foundation, which has two broad objectives. In the first objective, the term ‘welfare’ is taken in a broad sense, which means that we raise collective voice at the right forum for social, economic, legal and political rights of people, particularly people of low stratum. This is high time, when all of us collectively struggle to secure people’s rights. This target can only be achieved by paying attention to collective benefits rather than individual ones. Advanced nations’ history indicates that affluent people played a vital role in securing rights of those people who are comparatively below in social status. They worked for collective benefits over individual because individual richness never secures respect at the international level as a nation. Being a nation, we can also get a right position in the international community provided we stand for the others’ rights as we do for ours. Remember, a nation's prestige and dignity much more dependent on collective development than individual ones.

High profile slogans and wishing will never work unless we prove that we want to do something practically for those people who are unfortunate and unable to meet necessities of life for any reasons. Therefore, the narrow meaning of ‘welfare’ reflects initiation of projects that provide tangible help and immediate relief to needy and have-nots.

Pakistan is not a social welfare state and there is no hope that it will be in a near future. Therefore the social responsibility of society has to be increased to help those people who have either crossed the borderline of poverty or are sitting on its threshold. Poor people are not looking towards state help but hoping that society will take a step forward to rescue them. Hence it has become our collective responsibility not only to strive for social welfare state but also to come forward to share the problems of those who are in urgent need.