Mega Project: Thalassemia
Blog-1

Circle # 5: (Champs)

· Irsa Kanwal (leader)

· Khadeeja Amjad

· Shoaib Khan

· Umar Iqbal

· M. Moiz

· Ayaz Hassan

· M. Imran

Blog: Thalassemia

Problem Statement:

Thalassemia, a blood disease which is inherited from parents to their children in which the human body makes abnormal hemoglobin which destroys large number of Red Blood Cells. In severe condition the patient need regular blood transfusions, which is a quite painful process and leads to various other diseases like HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B and others as well. Thalassemia is a hereditary ailment that is common in Pakistan. Carrier rate in Pakistan is estimated to be 5–8% with 5,000 new patients diagnosed with thalassemia major every year. Many factors are responsible for high incidence of thalassemia, especially inter-family marriages, which affect people of all ethnicity. Pakistan is unfortunately among world’s top countries having more than 100,000 Thalassemia patients and it as per stats more than 5000 new cases of this disease registers every year. Being a preventable disease, it is continuously increasing in our country due to lack of awareness. We do not have effective system to educate our people about this disease and to aware them about its severity. Many countries having worst situation than Pakistan, they have controlled and eradicated this disease from their country but unfortunately no such work is being done by our Government for the disease.

Rationale for Thalassemia:

· Unawareness: Locals are totally unaware of the reasons, though this disease is curable. The only prevention is a simple blood test before marriage as it will indicate the probability of thalassemia in the next generation.

· In Pakistan cousin marriages is a common trend to observe which also serves as a major role and it continues to thrive.

Our Target:

We will be doing a campaign to raise awareness for prevention and help those who are already going through the misery of this disease. So our target will be following:

· Local people, no specific age group, both genders

· We will be doing this campaign virtually, so all internet users

· Thalassemia patients

Timeline:

· 1st week: (14–20, Sep-2020) our team will start a campaign virtually,

· 2nd week: (21- 27, Sep, 2020) we will be collecting data from thalassemia centers and our virtual seminars will also be

· 3rd week: (28- 4, Oct, 2020) main focus on online seminars

· 4th week: (5–11, Oct, 2020) we will finalize our data and process the progress and submit the results to our project managers.

Task division:

The expenses of arranging seminars, awareness programs and Blood Donation camps will be done by the donations and for the Fund raising we will be doing the following things. We’ll arrange online seminar with small registration fee in our respective fields.

· Dr. Ayaz will arrange programs related to his Veterinary Services.

· Nutritionist Khadeeja will arrange programs related to health dietary guidelines and beauty tips specially for females.

· Engineer Shoaib will arrange programs and short courses related to Industrial engineering and Blood camps in Karachi with Indus Hospital.

· Mr. Umar Iqbal will design the brochures.

· Imran, M. Moiz and I (Irsa) will do promotions and handle the social media accounts of our organization.

How we will act:

More than 2.7 Million blood donations are collected around Pakistan each year and the fourth part of it is consumed by the thalassemia patients which is still not sufficient for them, so by arranging blood for them will help the existing patients.

· Distribution of Appreciation certificate to the Blood donors and organizers.

· With the help of Hospitals like Indus Hospital, we will collect the Blood.

· Providing public with the brochures and pamphlets to aware them about thalassemia in blood camps.

· Initiating campaigns for the blood donation through social media.

Our Approach:

· How we will be working to help eradicate the disease?

· How our campaign will work?

· How we will raise awareness?

· How we will gather donations?

Solution:

· Arranging awareness seminars online via Facebook, Zoom etc.

· Awareness through printed brochures and pamphlets.

· Training of parents of Thalassemia patients by connecting them to NGOs.

· Awareness to create culture of Thalassemia testing before marriage.

Channels:

We choose social media platform to deliver seminars to maintain social distancing and because of their popularity among our youth to provide them with general knowledge about the disease and urge them to do thalassemia screening at least before marriage to avoid spread of the diseases in next generation, and will convince and direct the healthy people to donate blood for already affective patients.

Key Activities:

The main activities will include Seminars (Online/In Person), Brochure and pamphlets distribution, arranging blood camps for collecting blood, Funds collection through different earning activities. We just have to aware the people to immediately visit the doctor and to go for thalassemia screening as they feel symptoms.

Partnerships:

We will connect to renowned organizations and hospitals already working for thalassemia like Indus Hospital Karachi and “Al-Khidmat” foundation and different NGOs already working for Thalassemia patients. University, College and Coaching center students and Amal Fellows will spread our program.

Reflections:

Reflections of our project and team members are broken down into following points:

· Challenges

· Benefits

· Group learning

· Principles and Values

· Future learning

Challenges:

1-Communication gap:

Some of our members were busy in their final exams or in other tasks and we were facing this issue.

Solution: We arranged meetings according to feasibility of all the members where all issues were discussed and fortunately we covered that gap.

2-Working under given timeline:

Complete the task under given timeline is a task in itself, and we are also much concerned about it.
Solution: so we discussed and all members took responsibility of one particular thing according to their convenience and expertise and hence the issue was resolved.

Benefits:

· Learning:

I was unaware of the fact how we can utilize online webinars to generate funds for our project, so it was a new thing that I learnt. Likewise, every member shared multiple ideas and solutions to different issues which we were facing in our project which helped all of us to think in new horizon.

· Motivation:

All members were encouraged to present their ideas and then the idea and possible outcomes were discussed. In initial stage we were considering solid waste management, safe milk delivery to doorstep, stationary idea. All were proposed by different members hence everyone had their chance and was supported and motivated enough to speak for their ideas.

· Strengths:

Team work is a depiction of EK aur EK GYARAH every member has their own specialties so when we work together all those super powers combine together and the results are astonishingly multiplied. In our case each member came up with a different idea and we tried our best to combine the idea to have best possible outcomes.

Learning of all team members:

· Irsa: I am learning to work under pressure and trying to overcome my procrastinating habit, as I mentioned this habit and considering the fact that I am leader of the circle I really had to work and learning to manage things.

· Imran: I am learning a lot as everyone is sharing their thoughts and we are discussing with each other to improve our project. Beside this I am strengthening my teamwork skill because every member is putting their efforts as well as engaging each other.

· Ayaz: Customizing yourself for the group and making it productive enough to be helpful for others as well. Whole new perspective of working in a team virtually.

· Umar: Working and learning in team has its own perks. I am strengthening my teamwork skill because every member is putting their efforts as well as engaging each other.

· Moiz: I learnt to work in team and how to cop up with things if they are against our prospect. Giving respect to every ones suggestion and listening to them help us to see things from a different prospect. Through this project I’m learning the management of time and resources inorder to effectively achieve my and our goals. The project is a great learning opportunity to enhance my willingness to work in a team and accelerate the team spirit.

· Shoaib: I have learnt the lesson to never giving up in any challenging situation and whenever you work with your dedication and passion the problems start fading away and new doors of opportunities open. We always talk about helping others but doing it on ground is a different and most beautiful feeling in the world.

· Khadeeja: The main take away from this project was how we can help humanity at individual level and together in a team. I also learn that we should consider perceptions of every member rather than imposing our ideas.

Group Learning:

Learning new things helps to grow but this time learning was totally a new thing, as we learnt in team how to tackle issues while working for a social cause. A team helps out to cover the weaknesses of individuals. Discussions and positive feed backs help to improve. Another important thing that we learnt that writing down a schedule on a paper is far easy than performing it actually. Amal’s principals EK aur EK GYARAH helped us to arrange our plan in a practical way. We were also busy with our personal chores so we ran short of time for our discussions, but at the last moment we implemented KAM KAM KAM and finally did our things. Working on our project was very surreal at first but then KHUDI self learning made us to do make our project practicable.

Values:

● Honesty:

As of our nature of mega project, honesty is our one of core values. Every member is being honest in their duties and communication conveyed to each member was on honesty based. We enjoyed this honesty at group level and we observed it real productive as being honest revealed real-time problems and their solutions.

● Responsibilities:

Leader made a list: We have to do this to make our project successful. Whole group picked the duties they could do, to their ease. As a result everyone became responsible to duties. It was productive then.

● Growth:

Reporting on weekly based helped us to grow our cause of mega project. Today when we look back to first day of discussing about topic of mega project, we can see our growth.

● Humility:

Being in different cities caused a little bit of humility in start. It was resolved as soon as it was created. Everyone in the group have been really cooperative to work and their dedication to the project is unbelievable.

● Acceptance:

On a scale of 1–10 every person has a certain level of acceptance. It does saves a lot of time spent on arguments. Bringing a group to one point is quite a job. It was placed well due to acceptance level of my group at 8, and I really loved the way we have been working and look forward to work in future.

Future Learning:

We are learning how to work in a team, how to accept our mistakes and to value others opinions which we will definitely incorporate in our future lives. Our project is a social work which will help others to understand the severity of the disease and how with just a little attention we can save our generations from this deadly disease, so in future we pledge to stand with the cause and always work and support our best to eliminate it from our society.