In February 2010, Naya Jeevan launched their Friends Chapter in Karachi at Faraar Gallery @ T2F, which was attended by many prominent professionals, decision makers and academics including personalities such as Farukh Captain, Ishrat Husain, Qasim Rabbani, Shahab Ghani, Aqeel Bilgrami and Aziz Khan.
Friends of Naya Jeevan is launched with the aim to form niche bodies of individuals across Pakistan helping to create presence for the social enterprise among corporate entities and individuals alike and to encourage more bodies to invest in quality health care for their employees.
About Naya Jeevan:
Naya Jeevan, translated literally to mean ‘A New Life’, is a California-based, not-for-profit, social enterprise, dedicated to nurturing and rejuvenation of the lives of low-income families throughout the emerging world with a specific focus on South Asia. Naya Jeevan’s mission is to make quality health care services accessible to a large segment of society which earns less than PKR 15,000 per month and is employed in the formal or informal sector. The underlying belief behind the social enterprise is that everyone has a right to equal benefits and adequate healthcare. This novel social enterprise idea was conceived by three individuals – Dr Asher Hassan, Saad Tabani and Irum Musharraf and indeed won them NYU’s Social Entrepreneurship Business Plan Award in 2008. Subsequently, they went about the task of formally establishing Naya Jeevan as a not-for-profit organisation, with initial investment from NYU worth $75,000 as seed capital. Naya Jeevan has been honoured as a 2009 Draper Richards Foundation award recipient accompanied by a $100,000/ year fellowship for three years. Additionally, Naya Jeevan was a part of the Clinton Global Initiative 2009, and was presented with a certificate of recognition by former United States President Bill Clinton. There are very few Pakistani-based organisations that are recipients of this honour.
In Pakistan, Naya Jeevan is patronised and supported by many multinational and SME companies and continues to garner popular support throughout the corporate, small to medium enterprise and non-profit sectors. Naya Jeevan is determined to bringing about this much-needed change in healthcare and social services for the underprivileged across the nation and has strategically designed the model to make it easily scalable, sustainable, replicable and therefore global. To register or to find out more about Naya Jeevan, please log on to www.njfk.org.
