Ismaili Centres Archive
The Midwest Youth and Sports Board hosted its annual Midwest Regional Sports tournament at the Libertyville Sports Complex on Saturday, November 24. Shaifali Lalani, Co-Project Manager of this year’s tournament, said she was most excited about the number of athletes this year. “We had originally planned for 100 to 150 at most, given the Thanksgiving holiday weekend; we ended up doubling that with over 300 participants!” Additionally, over 100 volunteers and 300 spectators were in attendance making it one of the largest regional sports tournaments held in the region.
A pioneering Winter Arts program for young Jamati members from Gilgit-Baltistan saw teachers from one of Pakistan's top art schools travelling to the region for a series of workshops that introduced key techniques and skills to budding artists.
As part of the process to keep the youth fit, active and motivated, The Aga Khan Youth and Sports Board for Pakistan organised a Sports Fellowship basketball coaching programme in Gilgit and Karachi.
Ismailis around the world may be cheering for a Canadian sailor at the 2020 Olympics.
His Excellency the President of Portugal, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, attended a celebratory event at the Ismaili Centre Lisbon in December to commemorate the 20th anniversary of its opening.
The December issue of our Newsletter The Akhbaar is now available.
When 19-year-old Zill Momin thinks back to childhood trips with her father to the IMARA warehouse, there is something she can’t quite put her finger on. “Being a girl growing up I would go occasionally to the IMARA warehouse with my dad, she remembers, “but it wasn’t as open an option…I wanted to go, but something was holding me back.”
Born a premature baby at Orlando Heath Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, Maya Tharoo weighed only one pound and fourteen ounces with a height of twelve inches. Maya’s journey into this world began with a surgery on her small intestine combined with multiple other health challenges, required her to remain at the hospital for 110 days. She believes she owes her life to the excellent care and dedication provided by the team of doctors and her family. Today, she has dedicated her life to raising awareness and serving that medical institution as her cause.
The Ismaili Jamatkhana and Center (IJKC) in Sugar Land was transformed into a bustling site on December 7, 2018, as countless individuals made their way to donate thousands of pounds of food. For the third consecutive year, IJKC hosted the annual ABC 13 Share Your Holidays Food Drive where over 100 I-CERV volunteers gather to help collect, package, and transport over 30,000 pounds of donated food to the East Fort Bend Human Needs Ministry, located in Stafford, Texas.
With the mission of inspiring and empowering new leaders, the inaugural cycle of the Leadership Training Program (LTP) was launched in Houston, in November 2018. Forty participants, selected from across the United States, participated in the training that was organized by the National Council. The program was conducted in partnership with the Canadian National Council, which has been organizing a similar Management Training Program for a number of years.
The Jamat in Kenya, alongside other faith communities, recently participated in the Festival of Friendship 2018, in a show of unity, cultural diversity, and friendly competition.
The TEDxSugarLand event helps spread big ideas and elevate inspired citizenship in the Houston area. For the third year, the Ismaili Jamatkhana and Center hosted this event in October, on the theme, “Local Ideas, Global Influence.”
The Ismaili Council for Bangladesh hosted an event earlier this year in which the notion of a cosmopolitan ethic was explored and discussed by a selection of esteemed speakers and guests, gathered within the beautiful setting of the Ismaili Jamatkhana and Centre in Dhaka.
Audience members at Calgary’s Jack Singer Concert Hall were taken on an inspiring musical journey as Rihla: from Roots to Dreams completed its cross-Canada performance tour on 22 December 2018.
The Jamat in Uganda consists of a blend of East and West, with Ismailis having settled in Uganda from various parts of the world including Belgium, Canada, India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom. The various Jamati institutions in Uganda have drawn strength from this diversity and the knowledge and experience it brings, and have organised a number of initiatives to embrace diversity and pluralism within the Jamat and beyond.
In our globalised world, people of different national, cultural, religious, and linguistic backgrounds interact with each other more and more every day. In such a world, the need for a generous outlook that allows us to live in mutual respect and harmony becomes more important than ever before. After all, the Holy Qur’an states that all of mankind has been created from a single soul.
Nine days before the 2018 midterm elections, the Ismaili Jamatkhana in Norcross, Georgia, hosted a Nonpartisan Candidate Forum for Georgia House of Representatives and State Senate candidates. Sixteen candidates, equally representing the Republican and Democratic parties, shared their viewpoints with over 200 attendees from the wider community. The candidates represented the northern suburbs of metro-Atlanta in Gwinnett and Fulton Counties.
