The Muslim Students Association (MSA) – the largest Muslim student representative body in the country in conjunction with the South African National Zakah Fund (SANZAF) and the National Awqaf Foundation of South Africa (Awqaf SA) have embarked on the largest student driven educational development initiative, Project IQra.
The project, which forms as MSA’s annual flagship project aims to fullfil three primary objectives:
- To assist in satisfying a basic need within society and assist in breaking the poverty cycle, by initiating a broad sustainable development project.
- To develop university students by fostering mass student involvement, creating unity and decreasing student apathy by encouraging social consciousness and fostering cultural understanding among students.
- To develop a project that can be easily replicable by other organizations, societies and campuses.
Project targets:
- Providing 3000 grade 11 learners with essential materials to pass Matric
- Providing 15 schools with essential teacher facilitating materials
- Providing 3000 grade 11 learners with essential knowledge & materials to get into a tertiary institute
- Organising and facilitating a mass career’s day for 3000 grade 11 learners
- Collecting R3-Million in funds
How will we do this?
Project IQra spans five phases:
- Fundraising and advertising for the project and getting support from various organisations including the South African Department of Education (DoE). This will take place from June until 17 September.
- Actively identifying schools, engaging with them and based on the identifying process, establishing the needs of the schools and learners. This will take place during August. So far six schools have been identified in Johannesburg, one in Pretoria, two in Durban and one in Bloemfontein.
- Getting mass university student involvement on each campus and, as a collective, putting the 3000 individual Matric packs*, as well as the school packs**, together and actively taking them to the schools for distribution. This will take place during the week of the 17th September.
- Preparing and implementing the Career’s Day at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Durban) at the end of the packaging week.
- Ensuring that there is sustainability, continuity within the project as well as within the development of the learners and schools and ensuring that Project IQra is easily replicable over time***.
* The Matric packs will contain: school backpacks, basic stationary, calculators, four study guides, four past paper packs, bursary information packs, university application packs, DoE print-outs and rechargeable lamps.
**The school packs will contain: a laptop, a projector and various facilitating DVD’s.
***We intend to achieve sustainability through continuous mentorship programmes and the launch of a dedicated Educational Waqf (Endowment) Fund. SANZAF receives waqf donations and invests it on behalf of MSA with Awqaf SA.
For further information, contact:
Minhaj Jeenah 072 456 7260
Taskeen Adam 083 259 3786