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FURTHER – Page 5 – Furthering the Cause of Humanity

Invitation to Apply for 2013-2014

FURTHER is now accepting applications for scholarships for the academic year 2013-2014. Please click here to apply or choose the Scholarships link under the Applications menu above.

Once you have applied, please remember that all decisions are emailed in September. You will see an acknowledgment page after completing your application which guarantees that we have received your data. Please wait patiently until September 15 and do not contact us before that. We receive hundreds of applications each year and do not have the resources to acknowledge each applicant or answer individual questions. Please visit this website regularly for updates and directions.

Community Service Policy

In view of the very low turn-out for volunteer activities, we have implemented a completely new strategy for making community service an integral part of the scholarship programme at FURTHER. This has become imperative because, as a society, we continue to face greater challenges of hygiene, literacy, and poverty with each passing day. If anything, we are declining as a polity and as a nation and this rot cannot be stemmed except by helping ourselves. Consequently, scholarship award renewal will depend greatly on the recipient’s ability and willingness to help others. Each September, FURTHER will post a merit list of all existing award recipients based on academic performance (25% weight) and quality of community service efforts during the previous 12 months (75% weight). The top 5 to 10 candidates on the merit list shall be eligible for renewal of award while the remaining positions shall be made available to new applicants each year.

All current recipients are therefore encouraged to become more active in organising community service efforts either individually or collectively. Various ideas were put forth regarding the kinds of activities that can be organised. NUST students made the commendable suggestion of collecting surplus food from hostels or restaurants and distributing it in deprived communities. While this would be an enormous service to humanity, it is also something logistically difficult. Other ideas included clean-up efforts in various parts of the city, helping public dispansaries, hospitals, or welfare centres in carrying out their duties, and lending a hand to orphanages or homes for the elderly or terminally ill. Even helping the traffic police manage the roads more politely and efficiently would be a huge service to society.

Please implement some of these ideas, whether individually or collectively, for the good of your society and for your own good.

 

 

Mid-Year Evaluation

We hope all of you enjoyed your winter holidays after your exams. We look forward to seeing you at your mid-year evaluation interview on Friday, 18 January 2013, between 2:30 PM and 5:00 PM in our office in E-11. The purpose of this interview is to establish:

  1. Any changes in your need
  2. Your academic performance last semester
  3. Your compliance with the terms of your scholarship
  4. Your participation in community service

Please bring a copy of your latest transcript to the interview. We shall also have a general discussion at 5 PM on how to improve participation in Community Service. So far this year, we have planned activities on 6 different days but average sign-ups have been 5. Any Community Service effort cannot be meaningfully planned, funded, or completed without at least 10 participants.

Please note that your attendance at the interview and discussion is not optional. We do not have the resources to be any more flexible in timing. In the past, flexibility in timing has resulted in very low participation and too many requests for additional flexibility. For this reason, more than half of the scholarship recipients refused to appear for a mid-year interview last year. You have more than 2 hours to choose from on a Friday at a time of the year when you are not busy. If you have any questions, please email Mehreen. Thank you.

Shahdra Valley Cleanup

Many thanks and congratulations to all those who participated in our Shahdra Valley Cleanup on Saturday, 17 Novmeber 2012. We found the picnic point in a rather bad shape but left it looking a little prettier. To our surprise, we didn’t find as many disposable plastic bottles as we had expected after our experience in Kaghan Valley earlier this year. So the recyclables were hardly a few kilos. However, the situation with candy wrappers, bags of chips, and styrofoam tea-cups was far worse. We collected hundreds of them from the bushes, the edges of cliffs, and from the flowing water which would have been crystal-clear but for these pollutants. Our estimate of this combustible waste was about 75 kilograms. We burned it all and buried it in a landfill which we dug ourselves. All the waste was gone from the valley as if it never existed. Magic!

We started at 8:45 AM and finished at 4:00 PM. With a little over an hour for lunch break, that amounted to about 6 hours each committed by 8 people for a total of 48 man-hours. However, to do justice to the beauty of this valley and to restore it to its glory, we probably needed to put in 150 man-hours. We could have achieved that easily with greater participation. Unfortunately, several people withdrew in the 11th hour and two of the volunteers were no-shows after they had signed up.

We need to discuss in forums how to improve participation and especially how to deal with no-shows. Not showing up after signing up is breaking a promise. We had planned for those 2 people and thus ended up wasting seats in a 4-wheel-drive vehicle which means we wasted some fuel in a poor country that imports all its fuel. If only we can all keep our promises, there is hope for this organisation and for this country.