Babylon Trust held a relaunch event on Sunday 19th July to celebrate Eid Al-Fitr.
The event was chaired by Ridha Al-Khazraji, who did a fantastic job of bringing the event together. The evening commenced with recitation from the Holy Quran.
This was followed by an opening speech in Arabic by the founder of Babylon Trust (Shakir Shabaa) who welcomed the attendees and thanked them for coming. Mr. Shabaa also thanked the organising committee for their hard efforts in managing this project at such short notice.
The event was orientated at families, because we believe that Eid should be celebrated with the family, there was a bouncy castle for the kids, and a magician, which both brought joy to the children at the event, the children were also delighted to receive their balloon models from the magician, and to be involved in the raffle draw where they pulled out the winning numbers, and presented the winner with the prizes.
Our guests enjoyed a 3 course dinner, from a selection of popular Indian dishes, throughout dinner they enjoyed participating in our general knowledge quiz, where tables competed against each other in a bid to win a prize for their table. Whilst there was a selection of fun filled activities throughout the night, the highlight of the evening was the Babylon Trust Youth Awards.

The Award Ceremony
The ceremony awarded 5 individuals from the youth of our community, for their active initiatives in a number of areas. The categories were divided into:

• Humanitarian
• Religious
• Health
• Political Activism
• Community Services

The first award went to Shaimaa Mukhtar for feed the homeless campaign. Although Shaimaa was too unwell to receive the award, her friend Marzena Goralska accepted the award on her behalf, giving us a few words about her friend and her noble campaign. We were delighted to learn that the concept of Iftar with the homeless started years ago by Miqdaad Versi, the idea was simple – to bring two dishes at Iftar time for yourself and one other person, and break you’re fast with a homeless person. Shaimaa went to one of these events and was really inspired by it. She waited for it the year after and nothing happened, so she decided to start organising events herself whereby volunteers brought food to share with the homeless. There was a lot of interest and the concept quickly evolved. It went on from there with events in Lincoln’s inn fields in Holborn happening both in Ramadhan for the past three years and outside of Ramadhan under the “Feed the homeless” banner. The project started from breaking your fast with the homeless, the most deprived community in London, to bringing volunteers together on a regular basis encouraging them to actively rather than passively participate in charity work and interact with the homeless, learning about their stories, challenges and circumstances.

Babylon Trust presented its second award to Afrah Mansour for her initiative Salah (Prayer) Timings. Abdulla Mansour gave a small talk and presented his sister with the award. We learnt that Salah Timings started off in 2011 at the suggestion of Afrah’s atheist friend, in her words she used to complain that she never knew what the Salah times were and would end up praying late. Her friend told her to look for them and put them somewhere where she could see them. Afrah started posting them on Facebook for her own benefit as well as the benefit of others. This initiative steadily grew, and at present the timings are sent out via text message, on instagram, twitter and Facebook. It has also now been established on Facebook, twitter and instagram for the Dearborn community in Michigan. Images are often sent from around the world for the backdrop of these images.

The third award went to Aimen Al-Diwani for leading the current Imam Hussain Blood Donation Campaign. Jenan Al-Hussaini his wife, gave us a touching insight to the work that Aimen does for the campaign. The Imam Hussain Blood Donation campaign first started in 2006, and is the first campaign within the UK which aims to increase the number of regular blood donors from Muslim communities. The campaign runs throughout the year, with a main drive taking place in the month of Muharram (1st month of Islamic calendar) where, blood donation sessions and recruitments take place in mosques and donor centres across the UK organised with their partners: NHS Blood and Transplant. Aimen works extremely hard to promote the cause, and his hard work has paid off, with extended media attraction, the campaign was mentioned in parliament, received an award from the House of Lords and backed by the former leader and MP of the opposition Rt Hon Ed Miliband.

The penultimate award was presented to Zena Taher for her #Justice4Nimr campaign. This campaign started by chance, or maybe by fate when Zena came across videos of an arrested scholar Sheikh Nimr’s videos on youtube, who risked as he spoke out in protection of the innocent. In awe of his bravery and selflessness, it prompted her to start a campaign in his name. Sheikh Al-Nimr is the face of the campaign, but the campaign is far greater. It seeks to highlight the oppression and discrimination faced by those who have been innocently detained and imprisoned for freedom of expression and also to highlight the marginalisation of the Saudi Shia minority. It seeks to campaign for social justice in a region where tweeting or protesting is seen as a crime. The campaign started out as a humble facebook page, and today it has grown to be an English hub for case updates and has well over 12000 supporters. The campaign extended to grassroots protests, which have attracted a lot of media attention, and helped to keep Nimr’s case in the news. The highlight of the campaign for Zena, was the opportunity to attend the United Nations, where she gave an oral statement highlighting the case of Sheikh Nimr and the oppressed Saudi Shia. The campaign now forms part of a global network of activists which now coordinate campaign activities on an international scale. The campaign is ongoing and Zena sums it up beautifully by saying that is “a labour of love”.

The final award went to Hassan Joudi, who was unable to attend himself, his father received the award on his behalf and gave a heart-warming speech about the Iraqi Youth and their achievements in the community. Hassan was awarded for his active role in a number of projects concerning Islamic Unity Society (IUS) which was set up in 1995, and now has over 500 members across the UK. They currently operate mostly in London and Manchester, as well as having projects running across the UK all run solely by volunteers. Hassan has been an active member for IUS for many years and has worked extremely hard in a number of causes namely, tree planting, interfaith dialogue and participation in health related research.

Our aims
Our guests were impressed at the vast number of projects carried out and mentioned by the youth, and as a result we received much positive feedback, some promising to support Babylon Trust projects both financially and non-financially. It gives us great satisfaction to learn that parents have become aware of youth activities, and this was one of the aims behind this event. Furthermore, at Babylon Trust we feel that the award ceremony in particular fits in very well with our aims, whereby the charity seeks to promote the work that is carried out by the youth, to raise the profile of the work carried out by them. This is to not only give them the recognition they so much deserve, but to also encourage similar initiatives through other youth. Babylon Trust further seeks to enable the youth with opportunities that can help them to gain experience in many skills in life. The beautiful thing we can take from the projects that were awarded and as mentioned above, is that the youth have either started initiatives or continued them, giving us as an organisation hope, and making us look forward in witnessing the abilities of future generations to come.

Mohammad Dakhel
“A well organised event, thanks for having us.”