What's New
Houston’s Mayor Sylvester Turner accepted a donation of half a million reusable face masks from Focus Humanitarian Assistance USA (FOCUS) and the Ismaili Council for the Southwestern US. The formal announcement of the donation took place at Houston’s City Hall on 17 June 2020.
The future is here. Once a remote possibility, working from home has become commonplace and more accepted, much sooner than anticipated. While most employers have in the past resisted the idea of their workforces performing their duties from home, necessity is the mother of invention, and the current coronavirus crisis has left many employers with no other option.
The world is made up of different races, nations, languages, and opinions, but we all share one thing in common: the Earth we inhabit. We depend on the planet’s resources to live our lives. The faith of Islam teaches followers to care for Allah’s creation, as part of our values of ethical behaviour and good character.
The second film in the Close to Home series, written and directed by Prince Aly Muhammad, explores the work of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) in Cairo, Egypt. The film is an account of a city whose foundations were laid over a thousand years ago, which has seen a 500-year-old rubbish dump rebuilt into a lush green oasis, and a poor inner-city district transformed into a thriving community.
A second film in the Close to Home series will be released on World Environment Day, Friday 5 June.
If you’re finding yourself with some extra time in lockdown, don't give in to boredom. Instead, see if you can give yourself some space and time to think about where you are in life — and where you'd like to be.
Paintings, literature, and films, amongst other forms of art, are repositories of a society’s collective memory. They have much to tell us about prior pandemics, their impact, and what we can learn from these impressions today.
For Sofia Babool, a 20-year-old sophomore studying neuroscience at the University of Texas at Dallas, conversation in recent weeks has centered around Covid-19. The world seems to be on pause; her school, favorite coffee shop, everything in her life has been turned upside down.
The fourth and final issue of AT HOME, a digital magazine presenting the programmes and projects of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), will shine a spotlight on parks and gardens in the AKTC portfolio.
When Lebanese landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic was commissioned to design the Aga Khan Park in Toronto in 2005, Mawlana Hazar Imam suggested he take a tour of Islamic gardens and architecture around the world, ranging from Fatehpur Sikri in India to Alhambra in Spain. In this interview, he explains how the research trip helped his design of the Aga Khan Park to capture the essence of the Islamic garden.
Members of the Jamat in Tajikistan are helping their communities — which are at high risk of natural disasters — as part of the Community Emergency Response Team (CERT), an integral part of the Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH)'s emergency management activities.