NUST Students Distribute Hygiene Kits to IDPs

NUST SEECS college is always ahead of other universities in innovation, research and now philanthropy in Pakistan. The NUST Social Entrepreneur Club (NSEC), ACM and NVC have banded together to produce Hygiene kits for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in rural Mardan near the town of Rustum; an area which is currently under served by the government and development agencies in regards to relief efforts.

Since Mid May 2009, the students actively collected and put together over 200 hygiene kits for the poor and needy. This past weekend, they distributed them to the refugees in two remote villages namely Jamder and Jallar, six kilometers from the town of Rustum and 200Km north of Islamabad. The kits, as explained on their blog, contained basic hygiene items like Soap, toothpaste, toothbrush, water purification tablets, anti-mosquito coils, and band-aid.

Three of the students, namely Sarfraz, Yusuf, Iftikhar took precious time out of their studies and traveled to our village from Islamabad to distribute these items personally to the IDPs. These kits do not cost much. NUST students estimated that it is no more than PKR 200/Kit. Besides, most of the items on the list are available at home so many students simply donated an item from home to make the kits possible.

To see 19 year old students working closely to put these kits together and then distribute themselves to the poor and needy is a humbling as well as a truly inspiring experience. More of such examples should be followed nation-wide. The students plan to come back in the coming weeks with even more items to distribute including more hygiene kits and food items. So stay tuned for their efforts.

FAST, GIKI, LUMS, IBA and other universities should take heed from this effort and lets hope more such gestures are replicated nation-wide.

Picture Gallery of their efforts can be seen here

NUST Students at UM Hospital