Family charity aims to aid unwed mothers in Muslim Pakistan.
A North Shore family is taking their passion for music to another level with a charitable concert at Centennial Theatre in North Vancouver on Sunday.
The concert aims to bring awareness to the dire situation of unwed mothers and their babies in Northern Pakistan.The Karim family — father Amin, mother Nermin, daughter Safiya (16), son Zia (14), son Fillah (13) and son Jamil (8) — is a family of performers.They were seeking a way to blend their unique identity and they found it in creating music.
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“We felt, for the children, we needed them to be proud of who they were,” Amin said,”to be able to stand up and say, ‘I am proud to be an Ismaili, proud to be a Canadian.'”Amin owns Lonsdale Quay hotel, along with private liquor stores and a campground with his family. Nermin is a trained optometrist, who has recently decided to go back to school and study law.Philanthropy has always been an important part of their lives.All proceeds from the concert will go to the Karim’s Canadian-registered charitable organization called Shahada.Shahada’s main goal is to provide unwed mother’s with a safe place to have prenatal care, give birth to their babies and the choice to leave them knowing they will be properly taken care of.In a country like Pakistan, having an orphanage involves several complications. “You can’t have a big sign on the door saying Orphanage Here,” said Nermin. “In that area of the world, if you say that, you are saying it is OK to have pre-marital sex, which they cannot do.”Attempting to fit in to the community and gain acceptance, the family became involved in an education project in the Chitral area in northern Pakistan, the Queen Academy. The school provides children with a high level of education while giving them the means to pay for their school fees. Each child is given a honeybee box to harvest and then sell the honey for profit.”Give them a bunch of bees and the next thing you know they can pay for their next year of school and they are feeling so proud of themselves,” Nermin said.Amin said the project has been so successful that the honeybee boxes are providing income that provides for things beyond school fees, such as health care and better living environments. The honeybee box is a good example of how a small mirco-loan, of about $100, can give developing world families new opportunities.”This is an interesting project on its own, but really the motivation behind this is simply to gain community acceptance,” Nermin said. “So that they know we aren’t coming in as these foreign people that are trying to promote a culture they don’t accept. We have a face that is acceptable to them and allows us a presence there.”Both Nermin and Amin said sustainability is one of the things they look for when they embark on charitable endeavours.”I think people, when they donate money, want to know that they don’t constantly have to be feeding it to keep it going,” Nermin said. “For a developing world project to be successful, you need it to be sustainable and you need somebody there to have bought in so you are not trying to push something on to them that they don’t really want.”The maternity health care centre, to be located near Chitral, needs funds to get started, but once running it will be open to the general public and hopefully require minimal financial support.The project is well underway and the Karim’s are hoping to have it operating in the next few months.The motivation behind the maternity health-care centre is a personal one for the family. Their youngest son Jamil was adopted from Pakistan.”There is him, and there are many examples of children, who I know would not have been around,” Amin said, referring to Jamil. “It is very clear what drives us. Little things make a difference. You can’t change the world, but you can at least try.”The family’s music is an illustration of how they balance their western ideals, their beliefs and their desire to make a difference.”We have our original songs about who we are but we are also ‘What a Wonderful World,'” Nermin said. “One of the songs we are going to do is The Beatles’ “Come Together” because that is who we are too. All of it is going to be a part of the show.”The family hopes the concert touches people’s hearts.”We might not be professional, but we do communicate a message,” Amin said. “People will understand the work that we’re doing, hopefully they will get some comfort with who we are, and have the confidence to know that their money is going to make a big difference in many people’s lives.”For concert and charity information, go to www.shahada.ca.lhowsam@nsnews.com