Road To Wake Up Project

From the past few months I was very depressed. Bomb-blasts, deaths, the whole country was dejected. I wanted to do something for my country and my people but couldn’t because of which I was frustrated. One day while praying I received a call from Maria.b, a famous Pakistani fashion designer, who asked me to meet her the next day. Many questions aroused in my mind. How did she get my number? Why does she want to meet me? How can I help her? I had no clue why she had invited me. The next day, after attending my classes, I went to her house and saw 14 students from 11 different universities. More questions aroused in my mind after seeing so many people there! She met me warm-heartedly. It didn’t seem that I was at a celebrity’s house because she made us feel so comfortable and not at all nervous. She arranged food for us, which after we ate; she explained why we were there because we were all confused about the situation. I got to know that when I and my social welfare club (youth club) arranged a lecture by zaid hamid, she was present and heard him for the first time. Since then she has been working with him. She distributed free cd’s to all her customers to show the work of this extremely inspirational and motivating man and when she felt that now many people have heard him so now she can arrange an event, a wakeup call to the youth, to tell the youth about their potential, to tell the youth that now it is time to do something for our country and how and what to do answer every youth’s question.


People ask us to do something for Pakistan but they never guide us. After listening to her deep and meaningful words, me and majority of the 14 students started crying. As we prayed to ALLAH for guidance and support to make Pakistan a better place for everyone and our prayers were granted that special evening. We started working on the project and our team, which consisted of 14 students expanded to 21 people, and this ended up being our final Wake Up team. We worked for 3 weeks: We met twice or thrice a week and we looked forward to every meeting we had, because we loved spending time with Maria ma’am who made us feel very special about ourselves. We had to spend the last week giving out 1200 passes. We were nervous because we were not sure if people would be interested in attending this lecture, because it is not a concert or a play of any type and we thought that it would be hard to convince people to attend this lecture, but we were mistaken because they were all sold out in a day. Many people were unable to attend the show and this surprised us a lot. Why do many people say that the youth is careless and why don’t they feel for their country? They should take the example of those who anxiously attended the show without being forced. The show took place on the 8th of Nov 2009 at 2:15pm sharp. This was not the first time I was listening to zaid sahib I was a very big fan of him. I specially love it when he says, “merey bachoon Pakistan ko kuch nahi hoga”. The program officially started with the recitation of the Holly Quran followed by a video presentation that was titled as “Voice of Youth of Lahore”. When the video ended slogans were raised and the whole atmosphere was filled with the voice of ALLAH Hu Akbar (Allah is Greatest). After that, Ali Azmat, the famous Pakistani Rock star, was talking about his thoughts of the youth and Mr. Zaid Hamid. After Ali Azmat, Maria B took the stage to describe her views. One of her most touching lines were where she tried to clear herself in front of 900 people, saying that “I don’t blame the people coming up to me saying why would a fashion designer do something for Pakistan? But before a fashion designer iam a Muslim and a Pakistani”. She kept her promise about taking only 2 minutes of the shows time before presenting the main man of the show.

Zaid Sahib got an over whelming welcome from the crowd of about 900 people. The first line he said after starting in his style was “I swear by God! You all are very lucky”. For next hour or so he kept me and everyone in his magic. During some parts of his speech, I got really emotional at times, and I admit that I also had tears in my eyes. His words made me feel very proud to be Muslim and Pakistani. The way he described the importance and potential of Pakistan was very inspirational and motivating. After his speech there was a question answer session, and Pakistan's National Anthem was played. All of us the organizing members along with Maria B, Ali Azmat, and Mr. Zaid Hamid were on stage holding candles to signify many things such as: hope, a bright future, and a sense of passing the message of dawn to everyone. Talha (my brother) played the National Anthem on guitar. At the end of the show, the head of organizing team (Musab) talked about his take on Mr. Zaid Hamid, he also described what Wake Up really is and what they expect to achieve in the future. Overall I had a great experience working with an excellent team who I call professionals and with a great leader Maria ma’am as everyone was amazing in what they did. I was responsible for food for the guests and the documentary, five to six boys were given the responsibility for the sounds and lights and about 25 students were responsible for the security. We worked together as a team, we asked people to unite by showing unity to the people. These three weeks were amazing and I had learned a lot from everyone. Somebody had to take initiative and iam proud of being one of those people who did. LAHORE AWAKENED (we promised that we will light the torch again), now our mission is to make wake up Lahore into wake up “PAKISTAN”.