Abdul Sattar Edhi was born in 1928 in Bantva, British India, and arrived in Karachi in 1947 with nothing. He died in 2016 having built the largest ambulance network on Earth — over 1,800 vehicles — along with orphanages, clinics, morgues, blood banks, and rehabilitation centers across Pakistan. He did this without government funding. He did this by standing on the street with a tin can, asking for donations, for sixty years.
Edhi had one set of clothes. Two. He never owned more than that at any one time. He slept on a cot next to the phone in his ambulance dispatch center so he would never miss a call. His foundation took in every unwanted baby in Pakistan — no questions asked. He placed cradles outside his centers with a sign that read: "Do not kill. Leave your baby here." Over 50,000 babies. He did not ask their religion. He did not ask their parents' names. He did not ask anything at all.
The government offered him awards. He refused most of them. Religious authorities criticized him for being insufficiently sectarian, for helping Hindus and Christians and people of no faith. He ignored them. When asked about his philosophy, he gave answers so plain they almost sounded stupid: "People have become educated, but have yet to become human." He was not trying to be quotable. He was trying to answer the phone before the next person died on the street. Everything about his life was that simple and that relentless.
"Perhaps the reason the Universe gave you a broken world is so that you could have a chance to fix it."