Kingston Islamic society conquer Mount Snowdon and raise £26,000 for Haiti and Kashmir

Members of the Kingston Islamic Society (ISOC) climbed Mount Snowdon, located in North-West Wales, and raised £26,000 during Charity Week for medical centres in Haiti and Kashmir on December 3 2016.

Haiti is in desperate need of medical aid after it was hit by the most severe Caribbean hurricane in almost a decade which has sent the migrant shelters in Tijuana, Mexico into a state of emergency with people constantly flocking to the camps seeking safe U.S refuge.

“We chose to raise awareness because all of the focus is on Syria and Yemen and we wanted to focus on something that isn’t getting enough coverage.

“There is a lot of poverty where the clinics will be,” Munaim Sauid, an ISOC member said.

Kashmir is an Indo-Pakistani region torn apart by two nuclear powers: India and Pakistan, and is also in need of medical aid as this year marks its 70th year of conflict and the people are struggling through a freezing winter.

It costs £15,000 to fund one medical clinic which can provide medical aid to 15 people per day.

“ISOC always looks to consistently improve its charitable contributions to the best of our ability therefore raising to achieve a specific target was not the aim,”  Mohsin Ahmed, ISOC president said.

“We simply aspired to contribute to and support a humanitarian cause regardless of the amount raised.”

The charity they raised the money for was the Ummah Welfare Trust (UWT) which is registered and approved and it assisted ISOC by providing information and materials the society needed to fundraise for the chosen cause.

Between November 21 and December 3, ISOC hosted an auction night, football tournament, sponsored hike, bake sales and ended by climbing up the 3,560 ft Mount Snowdon in the freezing cold.

ISOC climbed Mount Snowdon on December 2 at the end of the charity week when the temperatures are usually estimated to be around 6 degrees centigrade.

“Our highlight event of the week was the auction night; treating wounds and healing hearts,” Mr Ahmed said.

According to ISOC, the auction night is always the biggest event and they estimated that around £12,000 was raised on that night alone.

The 100 people who attended were rewarded with a dinner bake-off competition and auction and the largest one-off donation of £2,000 was donated on this night.

ISOC pride themselves in their avid charity work, and don’t just limit fundraising to charity week alone.  On Wednesday January 25 they spent their time distributing food and drinks to the homeless.

This semester they aim to fundraise and create charity packs for the Syrian refugees in crisis in the city of Aleppo, and elsewhere around the country.

Last year, during charity week, they raised £18,000 to help the Al Muntada Trust in order to build a village for Syrian children and widows fleeing the war torn country.

Mr Ahmed said: “Since Islam teaches us to aid the needy and vulnerable as much as possible, ISOC does not restrict itself to charitable actions during charity week alone.

“We resonate with the words of the Prophet Muhammad…when he once said: ‘The believers in their mutual kindness, compassion and sympathy are just like one body. When one of the limbs suffers, the whole body responds to it with wakefulness and fever.”