Abdul Sattar Edhi
The man with a sacred and pious soul
Abdul Sattar Edhi's Biography
- born in 1928 in India, in Bantva, a small village near Joona Gurh, in Gujarat State.
- In 1947, after partition of the former British colony into two separate independent states, India and Pakistan, Abdul Sattar Edhi’s family, who were Muslims, moved to Pakistan. He grew up witnessing poverty and suffering, which planted the seeds of compassion and empathy within him.
- In 1974 Abdul Sattar Edhi established the Edhi Foundation which over the years has become the largest and best organized social welfare system in Pakistan and in the Third World.
- Edhi Personal Life: Abdul Sattar Edhi was married in 1965 to Bilquis, a nurse who worked at the Edhi dispensary. The couple have four children, two daughters and two sons. Bilquis runs the free maternity home at the headquarter in Karachi and organises the adoption of illegitimate and abandoned babies. The husband-wife team has come to share the common vision of single minded devotion to the cause of alleviation of human sufferings and a sense of personal responsibility to respond to each call for help, regardless of race, creed or status.
- His God-Fearing Attitude: He shuns publicity for the fear of becoming haughty. As the credibility and fame grew and the name of Edhi became a house-hold word, people started approaching him for becoming chief guest on special occasions. In an interview given to a journalist in Lahore in 1991, Edhi said,”I want to request the people not to invite me to social gatherings and inaugural ceremonies. This only wastes my time which is wholly devoted to the well being of our people.”
- In 2016 He died in July 2016, at the age of 89 and was buried with full state honours.
The Edhi Foundation operates on the basis of local volunteers and through private donations, in a spirit
of tolerance and solidarity that goes beyond racial and religious barriers.
With his wife Bilquis Abdul Sattar Edhi is still working in Karachi where his organisation helps the
poorest and the most destitute, not only in Pakistan but also in other Third World countries.
International Balzan
Prize
Foundation(October 2000)
“Serving others is serving God”
--Abdul Sattar Edhi