Well, hello there!

I recently had so much fun photographing the Human Development Foundation Charity Event, held at Crowne Plaza Washington National Airport in Crystal City.  HDF is known for supporting many people in Pakistan and has been around for 20 years.  HDF had benefited millions of people; for example, by enrolled children in schools to get an education, set up community health centers, children and women are immunized, children receive regular health checkups and adults learned life skills and vocational training to support their families.  At this event alone, they had raised $233,357 that will help the Pakistani people!

"HDF hopes to continue its contribution in meaningful ways for twenty more years, helping families and individuals not only meet essential daily needs but also help them work towards a brighter future,” says Sharmeen Khan, the President of the Washington D.C. Chapter.

It was a decent sized event with roughly 130 attendants, including people from the Embassy of Pakistan, doctors, dentists, parents, businessmen, women and artists.  I saw that all of them were glad to share this beautiful evening supporting a wonderful cause.

Before all of the guests showed up, there was already a lot of spirit and enthusiasm in the hall.  Everyone was working together to make sure everything was in order and that they were prepared for the long, yet amazing night they were about to have.

The event theme was My Childhood Dream and when the guests arrived, they had to describe a dream that they once had when they were children.  Some of the dreams were very amusing, like this one that I will never forget, a man wanted to be a rickshaw driver.  This young kid would go to Pakistan to visit his relatives with his parents and thought that rickshaws were fascinating and knew that he wanted to have a career driving them.  This same man is now a doctor.

One of the other thing that I found interesting was that the guests had to deposit $5 in a glass jar whenever one of them decided to use their cell phones.  I don’t know how much was collected at the end of the event by this method, but hopefully, it was a lot since it was definitely hard to resist answering texts, checking FaceBook and looking at Snapchats.

Also at the event, they had musical entertainment featuring Haider Afzal.  He sang beautiful songs that made the guests clap along to the beat, whistle in excitement, sing along like it was karaoke, and even make some people get up on their feet to dance. 

I was glad to have been there for all the excitement and happy to share some of that excitement with you here.  Hope you enjoy the pictures!