What is the Edhi Foundation?

The Edhi Foundation is currently the largest welfare organisation in Pakistan. Since its inception, it has rescued more than 20,000 abandoned babies, rehabilitated some 50,000 orphans and has trained more than 40,000 nurses. It also runs the world’s largest ambulance service (operating 1,500 vehicles) and Edhi ambulances are welcomed as friendly neighbours throughout Pakistan. In 2005 the Foundation donated $100,000 to the victims of Hurricane Katrina in the United States. Despite the vast sums of money that passed through his foundation, Edhi lived modestly with his family in a two-room apartment adjacent to the headquarters of his foundation.

His work earned him numerous awards at home and abroad, including the Gandhi Peace Award, the 2007 Unesco Madanjeet Singh Prize, the 2011 London Peace Award, the 2008 Seoul Peace Award and the Hamdan Award for Volunteers in Humanitarian Medical Service. Known in public as Maulana Edhi - a respectful title for a religious scholar, usually an elderly person with a beard - he supported and promoted working opportunities for women. Out of the 2,000 paid workers of his Edhi Foundation, around 500 are women. A Muslim by birth, Edhi said in 2009 that he had “never been a very religious person”. When asked why he helped people of all creeds, casts and religions he replied: “Because my ambulance is more Muslim than you.”