Canada Muslim Charities Give Locally
“I was amazed by what I saw,” Firaaz Azeez, a manager at the Muslim Welfare Centre, a local charity based in Scarborough, said after a tour of city schools to see the student nutrition program, Toronto Star reported on Tuesday, January 6.
“Beyond the food that is nourishing all these kids, there are student volunteers who prepare and cook the meals,” he said.
Tasked with deciding if his charity should increase funding to the local breakfast programs, Azeez was on a tour of city schools to see the student nutrition program, run by the Toronto Foundation for Student Success.
The program has been operating in schools across the Toronto District School Board since 1999.
The program is planned to expand activities by next year to include breakfast, snack or lunch in almost a thousand schools across the city.
Azeez’s Muslim Welfare Centre will fund the programs in 14 schools in the city’s least affluent neighborhoods, including Malvern, Thorncliffe Park and Regent Park.
Their donation of $30,000 will feed more than 4,500 students, according to Catherine Parsonage, executive director of the TFSS.
The charity is the first Muslim organization to partner with the student nutrition program.
“It’s the difference between kids having fresh fruit or milk,” said Catherine Parsonage, executive director of the TFSS.
“The money allows the schools to buy the food they are short on,” she said.
The Muslim Welfare Centre was founded in 1993 by Muhammad “Major” Abbas Ali, and his wife, Sarwar Jahan Begum.
The couple started with a small halal food bank in Scarborough that was open to anyone in need to be expanded later in a 45-bed family shelter in Whitby for women and children. It remains the only family shelter in Durham Region.
Helping Canadians
Offering help for the needy in Canada, the Muslim Welfare Centre was expected to gain more support from charitable people.
“Major Abbas used to say to me, if we take people’s money here in Canada, we need to use it in Canada,” said Azeez.
“More and more, I hear our supporters tell us they support us because we are visible in the local community,” he said.
The effort is not the first by Canadian Muslim charities.
Last Ramadan, Ziyaad Mia, a Toronto-based lawyer, spearheaded Ramadan 30 initiative to raise donations for food banks during the holy fasting month.
“Toronto has 10 per cent Muslims, and in the hard-hit areas of the city, a lot of the people are Muslims,” said Mia, whose campaign has raised nearly $250,000 in three years, and funds foods banks all across the country.
“There is a yearning among young Muslims looking to donate to charities that are local, that are Canadian and organic. The Muslim Welfare Centre has been a leader in that regard,” said Mia.
Moreover, the Muslim Welfare Centre recently launched a successful Sunday lunch program in Regent Park that feeds hundreds of local residents.
Copying efforts by other Canadian Islamic charities, such as Islamic Relief Canada, the group runs a halal ‘Meals on Wheels’ program for Muslim seniors, and hands out hundreds of lunches to the city’s homeless every weekend.
In 2014, Islamic Relief Canada gave significant financial contribution to the Daily Bread Food Bank and the Flemingdon Food Bank; to the Sick Kids Foundation for training of Palestinian doctors; and Habitat for Humanity, to build affordable housing for underprivileged families.
For 2015, the charity has “budgeted a significant amount of funds to assist domestically, including in the sectors of food security, refugee services, health, education and social services,” said Ahtsham Yousaf, a spokesman for Islamic Relief.
Yousaf says that change of focus comes from a “realization of a civic responsibility to assist local communities. Oftentimes, with so much suffering around the world, we forget that there is a great deal of poverty in communities across Canada,” he said.
Muslims are the fastest growing religious community in Canada, according to the country’s statistical agency, Statistics Canada.
Canada’s Muslim population increased by 82 percent over the past decade – from about 579,000 in 2001 to more than 1 million in 2011.
Muslims represent 3.2 percent of Canada’s total population.
Source: OnIslam.net
