Dear Project Sakinah Family,
Assalamu alaikum,
Last August, our Columbus Ohio team received a request from a non-Muslim middleschool teacher who reports to have two-third of her classes comprised of Muslim students. She wrote:
I appreciate all that you are doing in our community. If you have any suggestions for ways to reach out to my students, I would appreciate any support you could give.
Specifically, we have many female Muslim students who are in great need of a strong mentor program or perhaps counseling. The male students are at severe risk of joining gangs and are in need of a strong male mentor/counseling program as well.
The Columbus team took the request seriously and continued their grassroots work to engage agencies like police departments, child protective services, and community leaders to come up with a plan to answer this call.
There is an estimated number of 20-25 thousand youth and their families in the greater Columbus area who need immediate help or are at risk. The Columbus Team has organized workshops and programs about effective parenting, understanding child abuse, youth mentoring, foster parenting and more. They are working toward a year round plan of bringing trained parent educators and youth mentors in this teacher’s school’s neighborhood and in the rest of the Columbus.
They called the entire community to support their efforts financially too. So far, there have been about 100 families or individuals who have said yes to this call by sending their donations to Project Sakinah. Last Sunday, some of these families gathered at a fundraising Iftaar entitled “Youth: The Bricks of Our Future”. For them, the threat is real and the responsibility is personal. Please join hands with them and help us save our youth.
The threats of drugs, gangs, and sex-trafficking, faced by Muslim youth are not unique to the Columbus community. Youth across the country face these and other threats like pornography, drinking, suicide, and others on daily basis. That’s why our teams in Raleigh, NC and Dallas, TX have also decided to make youth issues the focus of their grassroots efforts.
According to a Gallup poll 47% of Muslim youth who took the survey admitted that they drink once in a while. 16% admit binge drinking. The average age for a child to be recruited into a gang is now 10. The average age of a child being exposed to pornography is 7. Drug dealers and sex–traffickers are now targeting middle schoolers.
It is a huge challenge for the community to keep our parents and adults on top of addressing these issues. Project Sakinah teams have taken this tasks upon their shoulders. We help meet the challenge by educating the parents and adults, and by organizing counseling and mentoring services to our youth.
Our goal is to save our youth from such disasters and help them become healthy, productive citizens of this country, and sincere slaves of Allah, subhanahu wa ta'ala.
Please join hands with us and help us Foster Strong Youth and Families. In this blessed month of Ramadan, please donate generously to Project Sakinah. Your donation is tax deductible and Zakat eligible too.
Your donations will support the following:
- Organizing workshops & programs for youth, parents, teachers, etc.
- Training:
- Youth Mentors
- Parent Educators
- Teachers Education
- Pre-marital counselors
- Obtaining the services of a Community Organizer
- Campaigns and Outreach
- Documentary Production:
- Human Trafficking of Muslim Girls
- Protection of American Muslim Youth
- Need of Muslim Foster Parents
- Expanding & Strengthening Teams
I hope and pray that you choose to support us so we can continue fostering strong youth and safer communities.
Last but not least, in this blessed month, please keep us in your prayers.
Sincerely yours,
Zerqa Abid
Our Collaborators:
You have received this email because you have supported our work through your donations or have attended our programs and have requested to keep posted about the Project.