A SYZter’s Efforts to Help Pakistan

Currently, there are record-setting floods happening across Pakistan. About 33 million people in Pakistan are now displaced and 1/3 of the country is now underwater. These monsoons began in June and have only worsened since. 

As an active member of our Alpha Pi membership at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, and a second-generation immigrant, Najuf “rAgnar” Malik was able to fundraise nearly $6,000 for Akhuwat, a nonprofit based in Pakistan. Even more impressively, this goal was reached in only a week’s time! With her efforts, Najuf was recently featured in a WPR article, which is linked below.

Here’s what Najuf had to say about the current situations:

“So, my family is from Pakistan and thankfully not living in any areas that were impacted the worst. But, it still made me really heartbroken to see the damage done to Pakistan and the people there. Over a third of the country is underwater and more than the population of Australia has been displaced- more than the population of the entire state of Texas has been displaced! So it is A LOT of people. And I remember I was really upset about everything and I was talking to my friend Manal from the Pakistan Student Association at UW-Madison and we decided we should try to do something local to help. So, in conjunction with SYZ, PSA and other organizations at the university, we decided to do a short fundraiser before school started and it could be something easy like a bingo board. We also made an infographic to go along with it. (This can be found below and on madisonsyz’s Instagram).

I think the floods are something everyone should be worried about because it isn’t something that happens once in awhile and then that’s it. There’s an inland lake in Pakistan now. This flood has completely changed the geographical landscape of Pakistan for good.

Also, it really does impact people in different ways. There are studies about how violence against women increases after natural disasters. When those girls lose their family, houses, etc. it makes them more vulnerable to abuse.

Another issue is that many girls do not have access to menstrual hygiene stuff now. Some people are forced to look for other solutions like leaves, which then results in infections. In the same vein, the number of people who need maternity services at this moment is at 650,000.

This is beyond even that and it is extremely scary because all of this is due to climate change. The irony is that Pakistan emits less than 1% of carbon emissions. The country is being affected in other ways due to climate change too. For example, they had a very intense heat wave that broke world records over the summer and then experienced snowfall in August. This is all things that should not be happening!

Overall, I just wanted to help out in any way that I could and I felt like with SYZ and the other orgs, we can spread awareness and raise money at least on our campus.”

Thank you to all that donated!