Words by Smiley Team
Serving underprivileged people across the world, the Shahid Afridi Foundation was a commendable winner in the Charity Film Awards 2020 for the People’s Choice award in the £100,000 to £500,000 category.
Their film, Educate a Child vividly depicts the plight of children across the world who lack access to education. It spread awareness of their campaign to ensure deprived children in Pakistan are able to attend school, a vital means for communities to rise out of poverty.
“Winning the awards have been really great for our visibility across online platforms,” said executive director of the foundation Saima Khan. “We’ve only been running for seven years so having our film available to the public on such a scale was amazing for us.”
In 2020 Khan discovered the Charity Film Awards, the world’s largest platform for cause-based films, on social media and decided to submit a film for her organisation.
“I thought this would be a wonderful opportunity for us to get our name out there,” she recalled. “I think we were really successful as well, in promoting our film through our social media network.”
Charity Film Awards campaign director Madeleine Johnson echoed this thought: “The Shahid Afridi Foundation was extremely proactive in communicating with their communities. So for charities that enter the awards, their communities are clearly a really important resource.”
She added: “For every single one of the winners, their films would have been seen by thousands of people. Because the campaign evolves so that after charities enter, they gain exposure from appearing on the website and in our social campaigns which are very proactive.”
Every year the awards have trended on Twitter in the UK and gained coverage from BBC World News, except for in 2020 when the awards went online.
Seven years since its creation, the Shahid Afridi Foundation, led by Pakistani cricketer Shahid Afridi, has launched a number of projects across the world that directly confront the struggles of deprived people.
With a particular focus on Pakistan, they tackle poverty by providing basic services such as water supplies, education and healthcare.
Among its projects, it has launched 14 schools across Pakistan where they cover the costs of tuition, uniforms and stationary.
Learn more about the charity here.
Support their work helping vulnerable people by donating here.
