It is turning out to be a good year for music as The Citizens Foundation (TCF) will organise this year’s Ubhartay Sitaray, which is a singing platform for school going students of Karachi. Ubhartay Sitaray is basically a singing competition, which will kick off from mid-January with the finale to take place on January 27. The judges’ panel comprises of musical powerhouses like Tina Sani, Salman Alvi, Afshan Ahmed, SB John and Azhar Hussain among others. Speaking about Ubhartay Sitaray as a platform, singer Tina Sani said, “It is heartening to see such young students sing these difficult songs. These are the children who are singing well without any training at such a young age. With the right kind of mentorship, they could easily make a name for themselves in the music industry. Kudos to the TCF supporters for taking this wonderful initiative to help these young minds develop a good music sense. At the same time they develop a philanthropic spirit to raise funds and realize that education is the right of every child.” The music platform is hosted by Supporters of TCF and has now become a flagship singing competition that celebrates music alongside the spirit of giving. Another exciting aspect to this platform is that apart from taking part in the competition, the school students get to raise funds for TCF so less privileged children can benefit from it The music platform is hosted by Supporters of TCF and has now become a flagship singing competition that celebrates music alongside the spirit of giving. Another exciting aspect to this platform is that apart from taking part in the competition, the school students get to raise funds for TCF so less privileged children can benefit from it. How noble is that! STCF is basically a group of volunteers assisting TCF in raising funds and spreading awareness about the mission and ultimate goal of TCF. This platform is known for working tirelessly to engage students and managing private schools to take part in raising funds. “Ubhartay Sitaray as the name suggests, is a platform for the young generation to prove their singing mettle. We came up with this idea because we felt that there should be an activity that is entertaining yet raises awareness for the education issue and TCF’s contribution in this regard. This event is for our new generation to celebrate music and stand side by side with TCF students to understand that with a good education in place, there are no barriers of class and privilege. We are trying to help these children break the stereotypes so they can build a stronger, more positive future together. We are grateful to all the participating schools and our judges to making Ubhartay Sitaray a success,” coordinator Biba Basir said while addressing media. The competition aims to demonstrate TCF’s vision of removing barriers of class and privilege to make Pakistanis agents of positive change. The competition began in 2012 and was received warmly by students and schools. From 2016-17, over 60,000 students have raised funds for TCF students and 635 students participated in the singing competition from 130 school units. One exciting success story of this platform is that its previous winners such as Emaan, Ayesha, Seemal and Sajar were selected by Salman Ahmed for further training, and they later formed their own band Irteassh and got a chance to perform in ‘Coke Studio’ 10. “All four of us have been participating in this fund raising singing competition called Ubhartay Sitaray organised by The Citizens Foundation since the past five years. Hence, we sort of knew each other from before. This time we were there at the finals of the competition and as fate would have it, Salman Ahmed was there as a guest. We performed as usual but what we didn’t know was that Salman Ahmed was recording our performances,” Ayesha shared with the media. The participating students are required to sing Pakistani songs only. Published in Daily Times, January 18th 2018.