£40k orphanage donor feels ‘cheated’ by charity

A woman who gave £40,000 to a charity to build an orphanage, says she feels “cheated” because, seven years later, the job has yet to be finished.

Ishrat Baig says she was told by Penny Appeal in 2017 that the home – part of a larger complex in Pakistan – would take about a year to build.

However, a BBC team found in February this year that the orphanage had not yet opened.

The charity has blamed the delays on the Covid pandemic.

For more than a decade, Ishrat Baig dreamed of building an orphanage. The Birmingham-based account manager says she did not care where it was built – her intention was to honour her ageing parents by naming a home after them.

In 2017, Ishrat thought she had finally found a way to make her dream a reality. She had saved £40,000 and got in touch with a charity called Penny Appeal.

On its website, Penny Appeal says it provides poverty relief in Asia, the Middle East and Africa by “offering water solutions, organising mass feedings, supporting orphan care and providing emergency food and medical aid”.

The West Yorkshire-based charity – which targets Muslim donors – raised £20.6m in 2022, according to the Charity Commission for England and Wales.

Penny Appeal told Ishrat it operated orphanages in both Pakistan and The Gambia. After several meetings with the charity, Ishrat was persuaded that her money would be well used.

She made her donation during Ramadan 2017. She was told her orphanage would be part of a larger site called the Medina Orphan Home Complex, to be built in Sohawa, in the eastern province of Punjab in Pakistan.

Ishrat says Penny Appeal told her the orphanage would be completed within a year, “give or take a couple of months”. However, a year passed with no sign of real progress. All she had was the location and some provisional plans.

Nevertheless, during this time, Ishrat’s image was used for promotional purposes on Penny Appeal’s website to encourage donations from others – something she felt was troubling, given that her project was not complete.

Ishrat kept asking for updates, but she says she was given a series of excuses for the delays.

Penny Appeal has told the BBC that it understood her frustrations, but that the countries in which it operated “face significant challenges including political unrest and extreme weather events” and said that – coupled with the challenges posed by the pandemic – this led to delays.

In 2021, four years after her donation, Ishrat threatened to publicise the delays on social media. She says she was granted a meeting with the then-CEO of Penny Appeal.

At that meeting, she asked for her money back, but was told that the charity could not return it.

Ishrat told the CEO that she no longer had any trust in Penny Appeal, but says she felt stuck. Even after being promised progress updates from the site, she continued to experience further delays.

At the end of 2023, Ishrat was sent an image of a completed building, and told her orphan home had finally been built. She made plans to visit in December, but was then told there had been further delays, and that orphans would not be moved into the homes until February this year.

Ishrat planned another trip to the site – timed to coincide with Ramadan 2024, which begins in the second week of March – but has also had to cancel this, after Penny Appeal said there had been further delays.

The BBC has visited the site of the orphanage on three occasions after speaking to Ishrat.

Construction has been taking place at the complex and includes a building that seems to match a picture provided of Ishrat’s orphanage. According to an assessment by BBC Verify, the structures first appeared in 2022, five years after Ishrat’s donation.

In December 2023 we were told by construction workers on the site that it would be at least another six months before the complex was completed.

On a separate visit at the end of February this year, we saw that work was still ongoing at the complex, with no orphans at the site.

Penny Appeal told the BBC that “Ishrat’s home was completed in December 2023, children will begin moving to the community from March 2024”.

Penny Appeal came under the spotlight in The Gambia in 2020 when an orphanage run by a local partner was raided by police and child protection officers.

The raid followed a tip-off concerning conditions at the home. Recorded testimonies from children at the time detailed abuse and exploitation.

Penny Appeal released a statement at the time saying it was “truly horrified by the allegations”. In 2022, the charity said it had “implemented a wide array of organisational and safeguarding enhancements” to ensure the safety of children it had been supporting “directly and indirectly” in The Gambia.

In September 2023, the Charity Commission issued Penny Appeal with a separate official warning over what was called “a breach of trust, duty and other misconduct and/or mismanagement”.

It said the charity had failed to keep proper minutes to record some decisions, and there been failures to act in the best interests of the charity and to manage a conflict of interest regarding its relationship with an unnamed supplier.

Ishrat meanwhile wants to show her father and mother the orphanage built in their name, but she says they are unwell, and she is not sure if this will ever happen.

But she has not given up hope: “I want to see orphans in those homes for my wish to come true, and to gift that to my parents.”