Aniqa Naz Foundation

Aniqa Naz Foundation Love & Literacy for Every Child

In April, we supported our street kid students by providing school course books and supplies for the new academic year. ...
06/05/2025

In April, we supported our street kid students by providing school course books and supplies for the new academic year. They're all set to continue their education.

We identified certain challenges in their studies where they need our assistance. However, due to the lack of a nearby workspace in Bhangoria goth, we're monitoring their progress and encouraging them with a promised field trip in the coming months.

We met the kids and their parents at the public 'More Park' (The peacock park, in Azizabad # 08). Working in a public space can be challenging.

And, yes, there are real peacocks in More Park - you can spot them in the photos. 😄

Thank you to all who donated.

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We asked a friend to make a nutritional sandwich for street kids. And then in the spirit of Ramzan, we distributed the f...
30/03/2025

We asked a friend to make a nutritional sandwich for street kids. And then in the spirit of Ramzan, we distributed the first batch of sandwiches among folks traveling in qingqis and motorbikes.

We believe nutritional food is critical in helping street kids get their education. Post Eid, we aim to share this sandwich with our street kid students and other underprivileged children.

**Background** : At our school for street kids in Bhangoria goth, we ran multiple meal programs to help our students build their immunity, and fill their starving tummys. All such programs made a positive impact. And we want to continue that very important work.

Post school closure, we had multiple projects to work on. But the project that resonated the most has been feeding good food to the most vulnerable ones.

**Personal Thoughts** : I, Beenish, feel that feeding the innocents is the most accurate representation or reflection of the kindness, love, and constant surge of emotions I feel in my heart. Whether it's feeding a dog or a child, seeing them eating a hearty meal in a safe environment helps my broken heart feel repaired again, even if only for that moment. It helps create a connection on a very primal level. ❤️

I've taken my time between projects, but I know I want to work with food. We will go slow, but we aim to do much more work in adding nutritional meals to the educational landscape for the underprivileged.

The world needs to look more like how I want it to be : kind and safe.

**Slides** :
1. Teenage volunteer distributing sandwiches among travellers.

2. Our first attempt at a sandwich for street kids.

3. Sandwich distribution.

4. Making of the sandwich.

5. Our distribution spot.

6. Chaotic crowds. Challenges of food distribution on the roads.

7. Sandwich ingredients.

8. What's in the sandwich ?

Friends, our street kid students are gearing up to start their new school year in April. And we are looking to raise 1....
20/03/2025

Friends, our street kid students are gearing up to start their new school year in April. And we are looking to raise 1.8 lacs for their yearly supplies.

Background: Last autumn, we had admitted 22 of our students to NGO and government schools, and are happy to report that they are still studying.

Your one-time help is greatly needed so these children can continue to study.

To donate : https://www.aniqanaz.org/donate

05/02/2025

***PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE. PLEASE SHARE.*** In the past few months, various utility companies have dug many roads around Karachi. These roads have since been left unsurfaced (unrepaired,) and citizens have been experiencing an unprecedented amount of dust and air pollution.

This dust-filled air creates high health risks for vulnerable populations including asthma patients, the elderly, and children. It can lead to respiratory issues, heart diseases, and reduced life spans.

We ask the KMC and federal government for an immediate resurfacing of the roads. We urge people to take precautionary measures & pay attention to the air quality, especially if they live in a high-traffic area with unsurfaced roads.

Here are some simple day-to-day measures you can take to protect yourself and your loved ones :

0. Start with the basics. Maintain personal hygiene. Wear clean clothes.

1. Wash hair regularly. Dust can sit in your hair.

2. Protect your eyes. Wear sunglasses. Rinse your eyes with water regularly to get rid of small dust particles. Use eye drops, if needed.

3. Keep your home and personal spaces clean. Do regular dusting.

4. Maintain proper ventilation.

5. Avoid going out needlessly.

6. Wear a mask. You can start with a surgical mask, but a dust mask will be more useful.

7. Be extra vigilant on traffic rush hours, and days with high traffic in your area. (In our neighborhood, we've noticed more traffic movement and dust on Fridays, Thursdays, evenings, and school hours.)

8. Most importantly, give your and your loved ones health the highest priority. Pay attention to your street and everything happening on it.

Urban Resource Center, : We request you to raise this serious road and health issue.

Payday! Happy to share that our senior most students have joined sixth grade in Shahid Afridi Foundation School , Bhango...
24/09/2024

Payday! Happy to share that our senior most students have joined sixth grade in Shahid Afridi Foundation School , Bhangoria Goth branch. SIXTH grade! That's a big grade, folks. That's when you stop using pencils to use ink pens, and everything gets super serious. Primary done, Secondary shuru. That's a huge milestone in any kid's life 😄

Friends, these are the kids we met in our early days of running an educational camp for the children & teenagers working in Yaseenabad graveyard, back in 2021. They were street kids, and some of them still go out on the streets to collect cardboard, 'gatta,' or do other labour work, and financially support their families.

We are glad and feel lucky to have worked with them for a little over three years. When we had met them, they didn't even know Urdu alphabets properly. Getting them to here has been a journey. And we've learned so much about the challenges and importance of providing opportunities to street kids Doston, rul gayey. 😄.

Aniqa Naz Foundation will continue to support all these kids with their uniform purchases, yearly course books and notebooks, and any other major education related expenditure. As long as children will work hard, we will stand with them.

Friends, this whole effort took a lot from us. We did this work as sincerely, honestly, and with all the devotion and commitment we could muster. In the end, we have been truly humbled by the difficulty and enormity of this work. Need to go and lie down a bit. 😄

We are looking to hire an art instructor for our students between the ages of 10-13 years. We will prefer a current seni...
25/04/2024

We are looking to hire an art instructor for our students between the ages of 10-13 years. We will prefer a current senior year student of Karachi School of Arts, or any other good art school.

This is a contract role for ten classes, each class about 90 minutes long. The classes will happen once a week at our campus in Azizabad, near Mukka Chowk. Day & Timings : Any day out of Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, anytime between 11 a m. to 1:30 p.m.

Our students are street kids and love all sort of art activities. They are literate and well behaved. We want them to learn to create art which is both fun and challenging. They art assignments should encourage them to pay attention to beauty in their surroundings, to use their imagination, and to trust their own instincts. We want the assignments to be made specifically for our students.

If you are interested in doing something new, purposeful, and challenging then this might be a role for you. Please DM us a link to your portfolio, along with your fee for the ten classes. We will be paying for a demo class.

This is not a remote role, and this position is not for a general school art teacher. Thanks!

Friends, almost three years ago, I started an educational camp in a graveyard to teach laborer kids. I had met these kid...
25/03/2024

Friends, almost three years ago, I started an educational camp in a graveyard to teach laborer kids. I had met these kids while sitting beside my late sister, Aniqa Baji's, grave. Since then, so many difficult times have come and I've wished to walk away, but somehow I've stayed. And I plan to keep going until the job is done.

People try to explain my work to me as 'God's work,' 'jaza-e-khair,' 'passion,' 'good deeds,' etc. None of this resonates with me. I don't think in terms of good or bad deeds. And I'm definitely not passionate about helping the downtrodden.

I was raised as an orphan child and grew up standing behind the protective figure of Aniqa Baji. She stood between me and the world. She did not deserve to die, and I did not deserve to live without her. So much struggle, so much heartbreak.

So friends I do my work only for love. Nobody can pay me enough money to do this maddening, thankless job otherwise. I do my work because the pain of Aniqa Baji's death feels as if somebody has pushed a dagger into my heart and has left it there. The pain is unbearable but also so valuable that it has to be put to some good use.

Today, I'm only interested in my work because I believe that's what Baji needs me to do. I want to be left alone with my work and my students.

I'm not interested in the rewards, appreciation, claps, or even cancellations. I do not wish to catch up or stay in touch. With all the humility in my heart, I want to say that the world has nothing to offer me personally nor do I want anything from the world. Except for one thing: the world can help me with my work. I need the funds to do this work.

If you want an obsessed, former-software-engineer, moved-only-by-love nerd to work on educating street kids then I'm your person. You can support my work by making a donation or by sharing our work with your network. Long-time supporters of the foundation are most welcome to stop by the school and meet the kids in person.

To make a donation: https://www.aniqanaz.org/donate

Thanks!
Beenish
Chief Mazdoor & Other-Menial-Things-Doer

Three years ago, we met Sajjad in the graveyard where he would water and clean the graves on the weekends. On weekdays, ...
21/03/2024

Three years ago, we met Sajjad in the graveyard where he would water and clean the graves on the weekends.

On weekdays, he'd walk the streets to pick cardboard from the streets and sell it to earn income. Sajjad's family is financially unstable, and being the eldest son of the house, he's expected to bring daily income so the family can eat.

On tough days, when Sajjad couldn't find enough cardboard, he would work overnight to collect it. In his words, "Ungliyan thak jaatien thien," my fingers will get tired.

Despite all the difficulties, Sajjad has always shown up to the school. He hasn't been our most talented student, but he has certainly been one of the most committed. And we value commitment more than talent.

To take Sajjad off the streets, we now give him a daily wage in return for doing minor services for the school. We created this work to help Sajjad have time to both study and play football with our school's coach.

Today, Sajjad is literate. He also plays football and works over the weekend. Recently, he even helped us teach some other street kids. He's happy that he no longer picks cardboard, and a new confidence can be seen in his body language.

Stories like Sajjad's are possible only by building a relationship with the kids over a long period. You can help us continue our work. Make a donation: https://www.aniqanaz.org/donate

Photos:

1. Sajjad with street kids from nearby Jhuggiyan
2. During football practice
3. With his football team
4. At home
5. On the new uniform day
6. Before he started studying with us

We remain committed to providing Sajjad and kids like him a chance at life. ❤️

Dear friends, we've devoted our lives to educating street kids, all for the love of a loved one. Please check our page t...
20/03/2024

Dear friends, we've devoted our lives to educating street kids, all for the love of a loved one. Please check our page to see all that we do with some of the most neglected children.

This Ramzan you can donate your Zakat and Sadqa to us. Most of our students are eligible for Zakat. We've verified. Your funds will help us to remain focussed on the most important task: helping the kids. ❤️ To donate: https://www.aniqanaz.org/donate

Three years ago, we earnestly started an educational camp to educate laborer/street kids, not expecting it to be too har...
03/03/2024

Three years ago, we earnestly started an educational camp to educate laborer/street kids, not expecting it to be too hard for us. We've since learned that educating street kids is the hardest thing we've tried in our lives. And some of us have previously built A.I.-based industrial robots.

Almost all street kids suffer from one or more learning disabilities. Their brains are underdeveloped for their ages, & years of neglect & abuse leave them unable to focus, listen, observe, or follow instructions.

In 2016, a non-profit Alif Elaan did a study & found that 26 million Pakistani children were out of school. We can tell you that with street kids' severe learning disabilities, these numbers will not come down easily. No matter how sincerely you try, the work is hard & painful.

Literacy experts in the field tell us that our students are in a good place, & we shouldn't expect a lot from them. We disagree. We want better results for our efforts.

We do not believe in therapy. The methods available in Pakistan are unaffordable, provide poor results, & are impractical for our situation.

We believe in the healing power of the arts. We want our students to be intelligent and smart, literate or not.

In January, we started the work by addressing our dysfunctional classrooms. To help our students be calm & focused, we introduced doodling practices originally shared by a very talented San Francisco based artist Wendy MacNaughton. Within days our students became focused, & started retaining more information. The experiment has been a major breakthrough in our work.

We are now testing more art-based methods to address kids' learning disabilities. We are even testing these methods on the actual streets. And you can help!

If you are an artist, & want to create exercises that help build children's bodily senses then reach out to us. You can do this from anywhere.

If you know street kids or live near them, please share their location with us. We would like to work with them & test our methods.

In due course, we hope to share these methods with the general public to use free of cost and help even more children.

For the past few months, the Aniqa Naz Foundation has been running a special Winter Care and Wellbeing Program for its s...
24/01/2024

For the past few months, the Aniqa Naz Foundation has been running a special Winter Care and Wellbeing Program for its students.

We've been working with the students for nearly three years now, and have noticed that they fall sick the most and hardest during the cold months. Their under-nourished bodies have weak immunity and cannot easily recover from a simple viral fever. Additionally, various factors make it difficult for us to help them with their medical treatment once they fall sick.

We wanted to help the children stay healthy and attend the school regularly. So we decided to run some winter-specific nourishment programs, and we are happy to report that this winter, the kids fell sick much less, and if they did then most of the kids recovered easily.

As part of this program, we did the following activities:

1. kids eat boiled eggs three times a week in November and December.

2. The students were also given Vitamin D, A, and iron supplements.

3. We made a special mix of almonds, walnuts, fennel seeds, white peppers, etc., and a spoonful of it is given to the children daily. (This is a common home remedy that caring mothers around Pakistan give to their children.)

4. In our daily canteen, we stocked seasonal fruits and students could purchase them at reduced cost.

Almost all of these activities have been executed by the teachers who care for students like mothers.

We are proud of this program. Especially since we weren't copying anyone else, instead it came out of our personally witnessing the struggles of the children.

Importantly, we've found that a proactive nourishment program is much more impactful than a reactive medical-support program.

The winters are inching towards their end. We hope to reach the springs in great spirits, inshaAllah.

To support such Care and Wellbeing Programs, please donate: https://www.aniqanaz.org/donate

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