Dast-e-Muakhat

With the onset of the global pandemic, Akhuwat launched several programs to fight against the COVID-19 crisis. One such initiative was the Dast-e-Muakhat Program conceived in collaboration with Akhuwat College Kasur’s Community Service club.

The Dast-e-Muakhat program aimed at mobilizing students enrolled in various Akhuwat educational institutions, to become active members in mitigating the effects of the virus in their respective communities. Each student/alumni part of the SLA initiative was tasked with identifying families whose lives have been severely hampered by the lockdown. Once these families were identified, each student/alumni was instructed to distribute an amount of Rs. 2,500 to each family.

The Dast-e-Muakhat program was implemented in three phases. Each phase enlisted students and alumni from a multitude of educational institutions under Akhuwat Educational Services and targeted numerous districts across Pakistan. The program eventually enlisted 831 students, alumni, and teachers and provided financial aid to 4110 families across the country with a total disbursement amount of over 10 million rupees.

The Dast-e-Muakhat project documentation was initially paper-based. Sarmad Nawaz Malik, a local student, proposed a different GIS-enabled Internet-based model which would geo-tag and digitally log all transactions and thereby ensure ease of reporting, operational visibility, and accountability. As Project Coordinator of this business process Digitalization Initiative, Sarmad worked as part of the Akhuwat team to help build the platform and tabulated and analyzed the resultant data.