The Karachi Parsi Institute saw thousands of people in attendance at The Ayesha Chundrigar Foundation’s first ever Sunset Picnic. Celebrities, such as Hania Amir, Ali Rehman Khan, Bilal Ashraf, Sania Saeed, Ayesha Omar, Tapu Javeri and Sarwat Gilani also made their way to the event.
What made this picnic stand apart from other similar events is that along with food, stalls and a chance to meet people in the city, the event also gave people the unique opportunity to connect with animals!
And there were various ways to do that. The ACF picnic’s most popular attraction was a donkey petting zoo, there were enclosures for cats (who have been rescued from Empress Market by ACF), people brought their dogs, and a very unique feature were the immersive experiences that attendees could participate in. For instance, the Human Cage Experience allowed people to step into cages to know what it feels like for animals to be kept in captivity.
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That was generally the theme of the evening, and Ayesha Chundrigar’s motivation for doing the event. “The idea behind hosting this picnic wasn’t fundraising but to connect people to animals and create an opportunity for them to interact,” shared the founder of the organization while speaking to Something Haute.
Naturally, if a place is hosting so many different dogs and cats, one would wonder if those interactions became rowdy or unfriendly at any point. With animal abuse so rampant in Pakistan, people can often be extremely unkind towards animals. But Ayesha shares that she was happy that everyone got along with each other and there was no display of violent behaviour. “We had our animal care managers planted across the place but there was no need for intervention. No dog fights happened, people were also being really gentle and kind to the animals.”
Perhaps this is what made the ACF picnic so successful. Ayesha claims that she wasn’t expecting anyone to show up, let alone the thousands of people who came. Complaints of traffic outside the venue and hoards of crowds inside were common among the attendees, but ACF has learnt a lot from their first big event and will put in more planning and thought into managing a large number of people when they do this picnic again.
More than simply attracting a large group of people to an event, the most important achievement of the ACF Sunset Picnic was normalizing conversations around animal care and increasing our compassion and sensitivity towards them. For instance, donkeys are considered unlovable animals by the average Pakistani. But Ayesha highlights that the main reason why the donkey petting zoo was such a hit was because baby donkeys are actually very cute, cuddly, sensitive and intelligent creatures. They are also supposed to be really fluffy, but because of their terrible diet and dire living conditions, donkeys in Pakistan often lose all their hair. “They are constantly abused, injured and living traumatic lives. The donkeys we see on the streets are in a lot of pain,” she shared.
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Pakistan sees a large number of cases of animal cruelty and ACF has always been at the forefront of all animal rights advocacy. Changing people’s mindsets is the first and most important step to creating a more tolerant society, and ACF’s Sunset Picnic has taken one step closer towards that vision.
