Ibrahim Khan Raja (Late)

The Pakistan Welfare Association UK journey started in 2004/2005 when the late Haji Ibrahim Khan Raja, a British citizen, who was born and brought up in the village of Tatral, near Rawalpindi, aspired to facilitate much needed religious education for young children in Tatral and the surrounding villages. He began this noble cause and initiated the construction works for Madrasah Ibrahim on his family’s inherited land. Unfortunately in February 2007, before completing the project, Mr Raja passed away (Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji’un, انا لله وانا اليه راجعون). After Mr Raja’s death, his family continued with the project and completed the building works in 2007. The Madrasah was then officially opened in 2008 and began to offer basic religious education and memorisation of the Quran to young boys aged 5 years and over. Since then, the Madrasah has produced many Hafidh-al-Qur’an. Around 50% of the Madrasah students are full time boarders and they enjoy free education, accommodation and food.

On 1 January 2012, Mr Raja’s family handed over the management of the Madrasah to Mr Raja’s son in law, Fida Chaudhary, a solicitor and director of Makka Solicitors Ltd. In the same year, Colonel Muhammad Nawaz Malik (R) was requested to take care of the day-to-day running of the Madrasah and he kindly accepted the request. It was then possible to plan a number of more ambitious projects. In March 2014, we started construction of the school building. The aim was to begin with a private primary school and then add an additional class each year until it ultimately became a private university providing free education to students of poor background who could not afford their education costs.

In March 2015, Fida Chaudhary laid the foundation of Islamic Public School, Tatral. Admissions were opened to poor students from Tatral and surrounding villages; we started our primary school in April 2015 with only 35 students. Since then, as planned, alhamdulillah, we have added an additional higher class every year and the Primary School progressed to Middle school. Subsequently, on 23 March 2022, our chief guest Major General Farhat Abbas Sani (R), laid the foundation for our Higher Secondary School. After achieving 100% results with excellent grades, we established our college in 2024. Currently over 400 students are receiving completely free education at the School and college with an additional 50 students studying at the Madrasah. In addition to free education to all our students, we provide free books, free uniforms and free transport to our poor and orphanage students.

The children studying at the Madrasah also attend our school classes to supplement their religious education with the mainstream educational curriculum at the School. Similarly, our school students benefit from the religious education offered by the Madrasah.

In 2022, in order to serve the wider local community, we began supporting and assisting other residents in the village through other welfare initiatives such as streets maintenance, boundary walls for the graveyard, CCTV at various village locations and Ramadan packages. In a gathering held at our school on 30 April 2023 we also announced a number of other projects, including free ambulance services for Tatral and surrounding villages, monthly income support to over 35 poor families, setting up business and employment opportunities in and out of the country for poor but ambitious youth. To date we have assisted a number of families through these programs.

Some of our projects have already been completed whilst others have been initiated and/or under consideration. Details of these projects can be found on the Projects & Achievement page of this website.

Our Charity is a registered charity with the Charity Commission in the UK under the name of Pakistan Welfare Association UK under the Registration Number 1164619.