Around 2 am on April 5, in the dark of the night, TCF alumni Mairaj Sheikh and Mansoor Ahmed led their community-based volunteer team of 60 members on a special mission. Most of them were former students of TCF like themselves. Their mission: distribute ration bags in the fishing community of Rehri Goth on the coastal belt of Karachi.

Mairaj and Mansoor, who hail from the same area, offered their services in response to the TCF COVID-19 appeal, helping to identify families in Rehri Goth who have had too little or nothing to eat since the coronavirus lockdown. Rehri Goth is a unique settlement built along 17 dry ridges. These ridges split the community further into 17 sub-communities or villages. As a first step, the two young men put together a team of volunteers to conduct household surveys across these villages. They identified households in urgent need of support and created lists with all the necessary information, selecting 506 most deserving families.

Based on their guidance, TCF’s COVID-19 Response team at the Head Office partnered with the Karachi Relief Trust (KRT), a disaster management voluntary organization to distribute the ration bags to these families. It wasn’t until late at night that the action began. TCF’s COVID-19 Response team had rented 20 vehicles that were dispatched to the Rangers Headquarters where the KRT ration bags were stockpiled. KRT volunteers loaded all 20 vehicles with ration bags, each worth Rs 7,000, as per the prepared lists.

In less than two hours, van engines cranked up and the two alumni hopped into the front seat. The distribution began, continuing nonstop until daybreak and all social distancing measures were observed. Watch our video update here