Abdul Sattar Edhi: Encyclopedia II - Abdul Sattar Edhi - Growth of Edhi Foundation

Abdul Sattar Edhi - Growth of Edhi Foundation

In the years that followed, Edhi Foundation grew through all of Pakistan. After the flu epidemic, a businessman donated a large sum to Edhi and with the money he purchased an ambulance vehicle which he drove himself. Today the Foundation has over 600 ambulances located all over the country. He himself continues to travel with call outs out of Karachi to the rest of the Sindh province, the response time and services the ambulances provide are renowned for being better than the municipal ones. Along with hospitals and and ambulance services, Edhi Foundation has set up clinics, maternity homes, mental asylums, homes for the physically handicapped, blood banks, orphanages, adoption centers, mortuaries, shelters for runaway children and battered women, schools, nursing courses and soup kitchens. A unique part of every Edhi centre is that there is a carriage outside each one, so that women who cannot afford to keep their children can simply place their baby in the basket and Edhi Foundation will place it into an orphanage and give them a free education.

Not only has the Foundation grew throughout all of Pakistan but it has grown internationally as well. Edhi's charity has been an integral part of every crises and disaster in the Muslim world, with himself going out personally to other countries to lend his own support and personally manage his charity's operations. The Foundation has been present in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Bosnia, Sudan, Ethiopia and the countries affected by the Boxing Day Tsunami, to name a few.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Growth of Edhi Foundation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki