In the quiet moments, Nasreen Karim still wakes believing everything is normal. For a split second, the world feels intact. Then reality rushes back in.
“The first few months were like Groundhog Day,” she says.
“I would wake up thinking everything was normal and then realise that he was no longer here.”
Her son, her only child, Dhanyal Karim, is gone. And with that loss, everything else fell away too. Sleep. Work. Appetite. Purpose.
“I couldn’t sleep, work, eat. My friends and family stayed with me 24 hours a day for several months just to ensure I was ok. But I wasn’t. My heart hurt and my brain had exploded.”
Dhanyal was 32. A physics student. A gentle, gifted soul with a mind that never stopped searching. “He was the kindest of souls,” Nasreen says.
“Sensitive and gifted. He loved cats, nature, and had a real zest for science. He taught himself to play the guitar and the piano. He didn’t say much, but he was an incredibly deep thinker.”
He needed his intellect to be challenged. Small talk bored him. Most of his friends were older. He gravitated towards ideas, not noise. He had a passion for physics and was building a future shaped by curiosity.
When he died, her world collapsed. Nasreen, a lawyer, could not return to work. She felt restless, suspended between grief and survival. She knew she had to do something, anything, that would have made sense to him.
“I thought about planting trees,” she says. “I wanted to build a garden where I could visualise him sitting.”
Then a conversation changed everything.
While speaking to HMD Charity, which works across West Africa, she was introduced to communities in The Gambia. Villages where homes are made from mud and straw. Where beds are broken frames or bare wooden planks. Where animals roam because there is no fenced land, no infrastructure, no stability.
What she saw there stunned her.
Nasreen decided to visit HMD in Gambia to see for herself, she booked her tickets and flew out on 4th January. “I couldn’t actually believe what I was witnessing. The poorest people I had ever seen – and despite this, the children were smiling.”
“These were families living in daily survival. Not a temporary crisis, but a permanent absence of opportunity. Yet there was warmth. Dignity. Humanity.
“They don’t want charity,” Nasreen says. “They want a way to earn a living.”
The solution emerged from HMD Charity: community farms. Shared land. Shared work. Shared futures.
With HMD Charity, Nasreen began raising funds to build animal farms owned by entire villages. Fenced land. Livestock. A way for families to feed themselves and earn an income.
“This is my ‘sadqa jaria’ (ongoing charity) project for Dhanyal,” she says. “The poorest of the poor will have farms that provide food and income.”
In Islam, sadqa jaria is a form of ongoing charity a gift that continues to give long after the donor is gone. For Nasreen, it is a way to keep her son’s presence alive in the world.
“Dhanyal would have loved this,” she says quietly. “I know he would be happy to see his memory honoured this way.”
“All the rewards for this project will be sent to him. That’s all I want.”
One farm can transform one village. Hundreds could change a region. Each fence erected, each animal purchased, becomes part of a legacy built not from wealth, but from love.
Nasreen did not choose this path. Grief forced her onto it. But in turning unbearable loss into something that feeds others, she has created a living bridge between her son and children who will never know his name, yet will grow because of it.
If you are moved by Nasreen’s story and would like to support her, please visit www.justgiving.com and search for ‘Nasreen Karim HMD Empowerment Programme’.
If you are moved by Nasreen’s story and would like to support the creation of community farms that provide food security, sustainable income and dignity to families in Gambia, you can donate here: https://www.justgiving.com/page/nasreen-karim-1
Every contribution – large or small – helps fence land, purchase livestock and build a future that reflects Dhanyal’s curiosity, compassion and legacy.
