The Thaakat Foundation is a non-profit philanthropic organization that raises money to bring free education and medical assistance to communities in Africa and the Middle East.
“Thaakat” means “strength” in Urdu, one of the official languages of Pakistan.
The Thaakat Foundation is a national organization with chapters in many other universities in the United States, including Bradley.
Uzma Bawany, the organization’s founder and executive director, established the Thaakat Foundation in 2007.
Bawany founded Thaakat hoping to encourage students and professionals to make an impact for those in need around the world.
Thaakat also gives future professionals a global outlook on health, as well as giving engineers a glimpse of how they are working with the environment to construct the schools and maternity centers.
Although Bradley’s chapter doesn’t travel to the schools across the world, they do work directly with Bawany to raise money for their parent organization.
Ellie Mickley, junior management and leadership major, is the president of Bradley’s Thaakat chapter.
“We want to support our parent organization by raising money for our causes, but more importantly, we want to raise awareness about the lives of the people in our communities abroad,” said Mickley.
Students in Thaakat host various events and fundraisers on the Bradley campus, as well as volunteer in the local Peoria community.
Haley Hardtke, senior biochemistry and French double major, serves as vice president of Bradley’s Thaakat chapter.
“While Bradley-Thaakat’s primary goal is to raise awareness about international issues, we also believe that it is important to give back to the Peoria community,” said Hardtke. “We typically will have one to two volunteering events at various places throughout the Peoria community each semester, and in the spring we like to do a school supply drive for local Peoria schools.”
Currently, their largest fundraiser this semester was “Succulents for Scholarships”, a campaign for underprivileged students from Thaakat’s DREAMS campus in Pakistan. They sold over 100 succulents.
Other upcoming events the organization has planned for this semester are a bake sale and a “stress-relief” sale, in which they will be selling items such as stress balls.
Bradley’s Thaakat chapter hopes to live up to their organization’s meaning of strength through these events.
Mickley said, “It takes strength of community, strength in the will to keep pushing forward, and so much more in order to get as far as these communities have.”
Thaakat is currently raising money for a school in Pakistan called Dreams for Kacha Kundi. Mickley says the organization refers to the school as the “dream campus.”
At one point, the area where the school is located was covered in trash and had a high crime rate, but now the school is thriving so they had to build a second campus to house all the students.
“The pictures our founder sends out are so nice because we get to see the impact of our efforts, and know that our fundraisers are going towards something meaningful,” Mickley said.
Bradley’s Thaakat chapter has general meetings every other Sunday at 6 p.m. in the library.
To obtain more information on Bradley’s Thaakat chapter, contact buthaakatfoundation@gmail.com.
