Inspiration: In June 2015, my husband and I were contacted by a distant and trusted family member. She told us about a girl from rural Pakistan who needed Rs. 15000 to graduate from high school. Rs. 15,000 Pakistani rupees equated to around $190 Canadian Dollars. We decided to fund her ourselves. As with most fund-raising efforts for initiatives in Pakistan, unfortunately, we also crossed our fingers, hoping that the story was credible and that the funds would reach the intended recipient. We had almost resigned the fate our donation to blind hope when one hot day in August, our contact in Pakistan reached back to us again and informed us that the individual we helped out graduated from school and secured $40000 scholarship at a university abroad. We were ecstatic! With an infusion of $190 — an amount that seems very attainable in the West but is almost three-quarters of Pakistan’s average wage of $255 — one girl was able to power through the last sprint in her higher secondary education and to secure a sponsorship to pursue post-secondary education.But most importantly, and what gets us most excited, is that she now stands a chance to empower both herself and her family to break out of poverty. She is just the first girl who we’ve had the privilege to help out. Our contact has since created a shortlist of more than two-dozen high-potential and low-income students who are unable to progress academically because they’re unable to pay their fees. And if we could help one girl get past a big roadblock in her academic progress and open up the chances to drive wider social change with a donation that was lower than one month’s worth of groceries, we wondered if we could replicate this success across the country.
What it does: It is a platform that allows donors to fund high potential, low income students in rural parts of Pakistan through transparency and storytelling.
How I built it: We used weebly to build the website and used the gofundme page to collect donation from donors.
Challenges I ran into: How to differentiate it from NGOs, transfer of funds to the school's bank account in Pakistan
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