Ottawa Muslims are being urged to get involved in the new Muslim Family Services coordination project (not to be confused with the Muslim Family Services of Ottawa organisation run by the Islam Care Centre.).

At a recent meeting of the Muslim Coordinating Council of the National Capital Region, the council invited local Muslims to help get the project off the ground.

The Muslim Family Services project seeks to coordinate social services available to Ottawa’s growing Muslim community and ensure that the most pressing needs of vulnerable groups — the youth, the elderly, women, the handicapped, inmates and new immigrants — are met.

The project comes in direct response to calls from the community for a targeted approach to social welfare issues. At a recent Voices of Muslim Youth-sponsored town hall event several people spoke of the desperate needs of vulnerable Muslims and appealed to community leaders to work together to solve the problem.

Individuals and organizations, such as the Islam Care Centre, have provided such services for years, but the MCCNCR says these individual efforts would be made stronger if they were pooled and coordinated.

Strong homes and families are the building blocks of strong, caring communities. The MCCNCR says it wants to work with all interested organizations and individuals, and with the relevant governmental and private agencies, to ensure that this is a joint effort and meets the total needs of the community on an on-going basis.

At the meeting, Shawana Shah, a project director with the Immigrant Women’s Service Organization, and Faisal Jama, executive director of the Somali Canadian Youth Centre, agreed to co-chair the Muslim Family Services committee.

Other committee members, approved by the MCCNCR, are Anwarul Haq, Mohammed Master, Adam Odwar, MCCNCR president Mohammed Zakaria (who spends one day a week visiting inmates at the detention centre and another day visiting the sick), founding president Mohammed Azhar Ali Khan, Akbar Khanani / Umar Iqbal representing the Sadaqa Food Bank, Leila Sieg, Suad Sidow, Michelle “Um Nur” Warren, Husne Ara Sultana and Mahmuda Khan for Human Concern International.

Anybody can join the committee and the council hopes to invite all member organizations to suggest at least one name so that the committee has enough members to do its job well.

The meeting to set up the committee was also attended by Nashwa Irfan and Yacoub Abu-al-Hawa of the Ottawa chapter of Canadian Association of Muslims with Disabilities, representatives from Cordova Academy, Abdul Rashid -- who assists the ill -- and Sulaiman Khan and Abdiwahid Osman Haji of the Islam Care Centre. They attended as observers but the MCCNCR has invited them to bring their expertise and dedication to this larger community effort.

Hawa Shafi, Mohammed Said (social worker), Mohamed Hassan (of the South Nepean Muslim Community) and Hasen Ahmed (consultant) have offered to act as advisors to the committee.

The project received official endorsement from Imam Anver Malam (Jami Omar), Naeem Malik (Ottawa Muslim Association), Saeed Bokhari (Islamic Society of Cumberland), Imam Zijad Delic and Emdad Khan (SNMC), Br. Mohamed Jebara (Cordova Academy), Riad Tallim (Guyanese Caribbean Muslim Association), Farhat Rehman (Canadian Council of Muslim Women – Ottawa), and Hamdi Mohamed (OCISO).

The committee is expected to begin work over the next few weeks. Anybody interested in joining should contact the co-chairs or Sarwat Humayun of the MCCNCR.

There are numerous areas of need: a disproportionately large inmate population, young offenders, single parents, female victims of violence, refugees, people with disabilities, the mentally ill, the severely ill, new immigrants, seniors, widows, widowers and students from out of town or overseas who have no family to provide support or comfort, especially during Ramadan or holy days. The MCCNCR views helping such people a religious duty and a civic responsibility. ■