Ashraf Ghandehary Bahadorzadeh, recently passed away at the age of 91, was a humanitarian and the co-founder of Kahrizak nursing home.

She devoted her life to helping those in need and was praised and honoured for her charity works. She joined the founding committee of Kahrizak from the very early years and helped building the charity complex as we know today.

In her interviews she mentioned the primary state of Kahrizak as: “A wreckage with two small rooms, full of stink and the patients were in the worst possible condition. There wasn’t any healthy water and you could see the lack of facility. Also the stack of trash worsened the situation.” She couldn’t bring herself to leave the place in that state, so she talked to Dr. Hakimzadeh (the founder of Kahrizak) and decided to help improve the place. Now Kahrizak is a city in south of Tehran and has a campus covering 101 acres (0.41 km2) with 1,400,000 square feet (130,000 m2) of constructed building space. 500 male and 1100 female patients reside in 22 separate units. About two thirds of the patients are elderly and one third are physically disabled. The patients are so satisfied and well provided that “They don’t like to go back home.” as Mrs. Ghandehary stated.

Mrs. Ghandehary was also the founder of The Ladies Charitable Society consisting of 3000 members today, who were among the first to rush to the rescue in Roudbar earthquake. They took in about 650 orphans. Later they did the same with Bam’s earthquake survivors. Now, they support 500 disadvantaged women and children.

In 2015 Mrs. Ghandehary received an honorary reward from Mohammad-Hassan Aboutorabi Fard, First Deputy Speaker of Islamic Consultative Assembly of that time.

Mrs. Ghandehary’s some other contributions and activities include performing voluntary service in Kahrizak, holding art courses for disadvantaged women, writing books on managing the charity groups and their activities and doing many international activities on Entrepreneurship.

May she rest in peace.

Source: tehrantimes.com