Assalaamualaikum,
I pray that this finds you in good health and strong Imaan.
The deadline to apply for registration in order to commence operations next year, is the 23rd of June 2017. Conveniently, this falls within the last 10 days of Ramadan!
We’ve developed a plan of action for most parts of the registration application, but the missing piece of puzzle is the venue.
We had a disappointing experience last weekend in our building search, which I thought I’d share with you, as there is benefit to be gained. In short: our local masjid is located on a site that previously operated as a school, which is equipped with classrooms, bathrooms, ample car parking etc. These are all things that a council loves. As such, we hoped that this would provide a short-cut to overcoming all of our hurdles. I’d set up an appointment with the masjid secretary, who appeared to be positive and told us to come at 10.30am on Saturday. So we did! To cut a long story short when we turned up the masjid secretary was nowhere to be seen and we were told in no uncertain terms by other committee members at the masjid that this place was only for XYZ community (I’m deliberately no mentioning the particular ethnic group.) But that’s not the saddest part of this story … the saddest part to me is the fact that these facilities have been locked up and remained dormant for at least the last 10 years !!
So- you might be asking- where’s the benefit in this story? Well, as we were leaving, Saadia mentioned, “this is the reason we have to start the school.” And I agreed. We have much work to do with our future generations, such that we fast track our maturity as a community and start to positively contribute to more than just ourselves, our kind and our own self-interest. I am excited by this prospect.
My special request of all of you this Ramadan is to remember the Fitra Community School Project in your duas. Ask Allah (swt) to open doors for us and give us the site from which to establish the school. We will be pushing hard to complete the application over Ramadan inshaAllah.
Now onto something where the positivity is more apparent. Here is a write-up that Saadia posted on Facebook about the ‘COOKIES for Kids Who Don’t Have Much‘ project, which was championed by the Little Seekers earlier this month:
How amazing are 4 year olds! Our group at Little Seekers did a brainstorm together 2 weeks ago, about how we could help poor children in Sri Lanka. I suggested making cookies to sell and the ideas that flowed from there were amazing. They wanted different things on the cookies to make them special, and decorations as well! Then one suggested they needed to make a sign that said: “Cookies for children that don’t have much”. And the others very quickly ageeed that this was a good idea!
This week we made our cookies, sign and decor, and had the ‘Cookies for children who don’t have much’ fundraiser, selling them to the mums. Mashallah I was so proud and impressed with the thinking and effort of every single one of them. They worked hard and were so involved with making the cookies, deciding on price (we settled on pay as much as you want after a range of $50 to $100 per cookie was suggested!), setting up the ‘stall’, selling the cookies and keeping the money safely and counting it all at the end. For me, it shows how much young children are capable of, when we give them the opportunity to have their ideas heard and help them with implementation.
(For those who’d like to contribute towards this feed the fasting initiative the deadline is this Thursday 25 May. Let me know and I’ll share details with you.)
Little Seekers is a pre-school that some of the Fitra Community School team have been running for the last two years. Read more about it at: https://littleseekers.wordpress.com/ . So, as you can see, we’ve been building towards the establishment of the Fitra Community School for quite some time.
As always, please keep us in your duas!
May Allah grant all of you a blessed and accepted Ramadan. Ameen.
Until next time!
BarakAllah Feekum
Adel
