Ismaili.NET - Heritage F.I.E.L.D.

The Aga Khan Foundation, which is involved in the fields of health care, education and rural development, chiefly in Asia and Africa, has now been registered in Portugal, Mowlana Hazar Imam announced during His Silver Jubilee Visit to that country in February, 1983.

The Foundation has branches and affiliates in Kenya, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Britain, Canada and the United States.

During His Visit, Mowlana Hazar Imam met with President Antonio Ramalho Eanes on Tuesday. Later, speaking at a dinner attended by the President of the Assembly of the Republic, Dr. Leonardo Ribeiro de Almeida, the Prime Minister Mr. Francisco Pinto Balsemao, the Foreign Minister Mr. Casco Futscher Pereira, Government ministers and diplomats. Mowlana Hazar Imam said, "The Ismaili community here is a new one. It was enabled to make its home here because of the exceptional humanity and open-mindedness with which Portugal treated people of all races from their former colonies".

Speaking of the Ismaili Imamat's concern with the material issue of social welfare and economic development in the Third World, He said He believed that man must not shy away from material endeavour in the name of his faith, but must be enterprising, contributing of the best to his family and the society in which he lives, so long as the content of his endeavour is within the terms of our social and moral conscience and so long as the objectives of the enterprise are equally acceptable. "In simple terms, the question is less of whether a man is successful in business or his profession than of the way in which he is achieving success and the purpose for which his achievements are utilised", Hazar Imam said.