Our story
In 2001, flash floods hit Rawalpindi. The Nullah Lai overflowed and destroyed hundreds of homes along its banks. Muhammad Abbas Gondal, who was among those affected, and a group of friends set up free medical camps in the hardest-hit areas and kept them running around the clock.
When the water went down, the need did not. The camps grew into three primary health centres in the city’s slums — in Akal Garh, Mohan Pura and Mohallah Raja Sultan — which have since become self-sustaining and still serve those neighbourhoods today.
Working there showed us problems a clinic alone could not solve: unsafe water, poor sanitation, girls out of school, weak local institutions and families with no protection against the next disaster. So our work widened to maternal and child health, water and sanitation, education and behaviour change, democratic governance and advocacy, and emergency response.
When people were displaced by conflict, we worked in the camps, providing health care, hygiene supplies, food, safe drinking water and care for mothers. We have supported communities through dengue, malaria and COVID-19, and when acute watery diarrhoea spread through slums in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, we installed filtration plants and set up community committees to keep them working.
Our projects now reach underserved communities in several provinces. What has not changed is how we work: through social mobilisation — organising communities, building on local resources and working with public and private partners — so that change lasts after a project ends.
