KARACHI: Alumni and faculty members Monday gathered to celebrate a landmark gift to the Aga Khan University. The MBBS Class of 1992 donated $250,000 to the endowment fund previously established in 2012 to celebrate their 20th graduation anniversary. The MBBS Class of 1992 Endowment Fund was established to support the Medical College in perpetuity and in its commitment to making continuing medical education accessible to more physicians who work in underserved communities across Pakistan and who come to AKU for workshops, research symposiums, CME lectures and other research related activities specific to Postgraduate Medical Education (PGME) students training at AKU. This latest gift is the most recent example of AKU Alumni’s generosity toward their alma mater. A career in medicine and caring for vulnerable patient populations is itself a way of endowing society, but the alumni clearly value the concept of paying it forward. Proceeds from the fund will continue to enable the University to open its doors to many more students from other medical institutions across Pakistan to attend world class conferences and workshops at AKU, to more closely connect them, through the curriculum, with advances in medicine so as to better care for the communities where they come from. It will also support education of undergraduate students from some of Pakistan’s most underserved communities requiring financial assistance to access world-class medical education. “AKU has opened up new worlds for me and my classmates. It has offered me new perspectives, which allowed me to fulfill my dreams. Looking back over many years of practice, we know that medical education is our most valuable possession. It is a privilege every day to practice medicine – it helps to ground us and humble us. It has been a lifetime of learning, growth and service,” said Dr Faiz Bohra, who along with Dr Mumtaz Khan signed the agreement on behalf of their class. They acknowledged the efforts of Dr Muneer Abidi and Dr Obeid Ilahi in championing this gift. Graduates of MBBS 1992 from within and outside Pakistan, attended the ceremony, along with the Faculty of Health Sciences staff and learnt first-hand the impact that the MBBS Class of 1992 Endowment has already created. “Our education at AKU prepared us well for the challenges of medicine. As students, we focused on didactic and clinical work – the tasks of becoming a doctor. However, we learned many things we were not aware of – excellence, compassion, resilience, passion, teamwork, commitment and intellectual curiosity – that have made all the difference in our success. We attribute this to the strong mentors at AKU, many of them women setting high standards for patient care and education, yet able to show the joy in their work and the human aspects of medicine” said Dr Khan. “Our alumni believe giving back is their responsibility. We sincerely hope that this gesture will inspire other alumni to personally contribute to the advancement of medical education” added Dr Farhat Abbas, Dean of the Medical College. AKU alumni are part of a supportive, cohesive community that spans the globe and endures for a lifetime. From lifelong relationships to memories of life on the Stadium Road Campus, there are innumerable reasons alumni choose to support their alma mater. Every year, more alumni give back in celebration of reunions, as volunteers, or through annual gifts, and they are not shy about sharing why. Published in Daily Times, January 2nd 2018.