SECRETARY'S REPORT

 

      Respected Elders and Friends,

      AssalamuMr S. A. Vohra - Hon. General Secretary & Founder Member  Alaikum!

      How we fared: Another significant year has passed, and soon we will be stepping into our fifth decade. We have taken up one additional significant area, that of empowerment through skill development and I expect MESCO will get more into this area in times to come. We have improved our performance over the previous year;our total income as on 31st March, 2008 stood at Rs. 3,19,67,106, while last year for the corresponding period it stood at Rs.2,97,28,186. Similarly the expenses at the end of 2007-2008 stood at Rs.3,67,99,278 (last year  it was Rs..3,18,26,808). Major funding increases over the previous year have been for  Education increase of Rs.24 lacs, Medical (Rs.10.5 lacs) and in case of Relief of Poverty (Rs.10 lacs).
Zakat collection increased from Rs.1,47,44,211 in 2006-07 to Rs.1,68,69,722 in 2007-08. During the year under review we have been focusing our attention on the drop outs, we conducted Vocational courses - a 6 months’ course for Electrician, 3 months course for Beautician (3 batches have been conducted this far) and a month long course for Henna application (7 batches have been conducted so far). In 2008-09 we shall be setting up Vocational Training Centre at Kausa in collaboration with Fr. Agnel Polytechnic.


Sustainability: We appeal to our well wishers for sponsoring various activities; preferably giving us corpus donations, so that with judicious investments of these, we should be able to sustain the activity over long periods. We have been successful in getting sponsors for all the 39 Sewing machines given out this year, Under Educational Adoption Scheme (EAS) 265 out of 280 students were sponsored; Under Nursery school 11 out of the 14 Nursery schools were sponsored. We received part sponsorship towards the deficit on the Mobile Clinic, 144 families were sponsored under Food (Ration) support, as well as a few sponsors for the High Cost Educational Loan Scheme. It would be best if we could get donations towards Corpus for such purposes, so that we are sure about providing continuity. 


Coverage in 2007/08: By the Grace of God our services were able to touch the lives of 31910 individuals through our three pronged efforts of education, medical and poverty relief. The 14 Nursery schools between them prepared over 500 children from disadvantaged homes step into high schools. Similarly, the students of R.C. Mahim Municipal High School & D.Ed. College of Education had a good result at the SSC Board and D.Ed examination. The first foray of MESCO into imparting skill training through the collaboration with Jan Shikshan Sansthan was crowned by the successful convocation held on 1st December, 2007 at J.H.Taleyarkhan Hall, where these certificates alongwith certificates for the Tailoring Class (conducted at Dharavi, in collaboration with Sophia Polytechnic) were distributed at the hands of Dr Jaffer Qureshi, Vice President of Muslim Aid, UK. At this function a very comprehensive booklet titled “A guide to Short Term Vocational Courses in and around Mumbai” compiled by MESCO’s staff was released; a treatise containing useful information for school dropouts. 


This year we were able to give out 1074 scholarships at school and 488 scholarships at college to University including for professional and postgraduate courses to the means deprived students; another 280 students were provided a more comprehensive assistance under the Education Adoption Scheme, and yet another 180 students doing professional courses were provided substantial funds towards their educational expenses under the High Cost Educational (Interest free) Loan Scheme. Education is MESCO’s forte and takes the lion’s share in terms of MESCO funding; this year Rs.2,10,94,618 was invested in this area. One of MESCO’s student, Ms.Sarah Rizvi cleared the UPSC exams and has ranked 86th.
Medical assistance being the next priority area took away Rs.59,66,175 of MESCO’s fund allocation. Our Mobile Clinic which covers 4 slums was able to provide medicines to over 21596 patients in the last financial year; while our Ambulance service continued to be the city’s most affordable ambulance service. We assisted 342 patients under our High Cost Medical assistance Scheme and 247 under the General Medical Assistance Scheme; 15 patients were completely rid off the TB they were afflicted with, while  20 renal failure cases were provided for dialysis for 6 months each.
The various schemes under the Poverty Relief continued as in the previous year; we distributed 39 Sewing machines to widows and destitute to make them self reliant; Dry Ration was provided to another 144 families; 30 houses which were in shambles were repaired with MESCO’s assistance under the House Repair scheme; 28 girls were assisted for their marriages (MESCO providing towards cost for buying articles of furniture, cooking appliances and clothes; this scheme has been discontinued from 2008-09). MESCO continued to collaborate with Catholic Relief Services and was able to provide bulgar wheat and soya oil to 18 institutions for their 1540 end level beneficiaries valued at Rs.45.9 lacs. We also organized four distributions of donated, used clothes at Mahim & Govandi; 1840 families benefited from these distributions.

Our gratitude: MESCO continued to get support from an increasing number of individuals, trusts, charities and foundations both at home and abroad which has helped it in continuing its mission that of serving the poor and the marginalized. We take this opportunity to thank one and all, for had it not been for all of you, we would never be able to serve so many of our less fortunate brethren. We would particularly like to thank Muslim Aid, UK because of whose assistance we have been able to provide scholarship assistance to school & post-school students, Iftar and Sadaqa (food support) packets at the time of Ramadhan and meat packets at the time of Bakri Id. We are also particularly grateful to Aishabai Trust, Roghay Charities, Allana Foundation, and Valibhoy Charities Trust, Catholic Relief Services, AFMI, Cutchi Memon Jamat of North America, FLAME and IMRC for their continuous support.
We have to thank the thousands of donors who have made it possible for MESCO to reach and impact lives of over 30000 people. We are also grateful to the 22 Patrons and 25 Life Members who enrolled this year to bring the total numbers on rolls today to 164 and 277 respectively. Monthly revenue from sale of Newspapers has increased from Rs 1,02,669 in March, 2007 to Rs.1,52,248 (per month) in March, 2008; more than 2000 families are donating their old newspapers each month for MESCO’s cause.


Our sincere thanks to one and all for their affection, trust and support all along, which now launches MESCO into the fifth decade of its existence by completing 40 years in September 2008. We have to place on record our sincere thanks to M/s Contractor, Nayak & Kishnadwala for their advise more particularly to Mr Contractor for his being a true philosopher, friend and guide of MESCO. May Allah shower His choicest blessings on all and together we bring sunshine to more lives in the years ahead. Thank you!

 

 Mr S. A. Vohra
 Hon. General Secretary and Founder member