April 29, 2009
Webinar: Dealing With Diabetes and Other Everyday Dilemmas: The Maslaha Project. Click here to view archived webinar

Some of the greatest integration challenges occur during the essential transactions of everyday life: a visit to the doctor, a meeting at your child’s school or paying a bill in a bank. Established by the Young Foundation and one of our featured Good Ideas, the Maslaha Project provides practical information to help the Islamic community navigate cultural issues to do with healthcare, education, family life, finance, and civic and democratic engagement.

‘Maslaha’ translates from Arabic as ‘for the common good’ and the website aims to open up new creative spaces to ask questions and share knowledge, as well as addressing significant social issues by working closely with communities and public services in areas such as health and education.

From the city of London, join Raheel Mohammed, Project Lead, Maslaha Project, and colleague Natalia Chan for a presentation on the innovative approaches used by Maslaha to provide culturally sensitive and practical information about Islam, and to open dialogue on some of the most pressing social issues of the day. Videos, audio recordings and a unique design combined with active engagement with local communities all help deliver effective practical solutions to the daily challenges faced by minority communities.

From the City of Chicago, home to the largest Muslim population in the United States join moderator Alya Adamany from The Chicago Council on Global Affairs with questions and commentary from Kyle Ismail from The Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN).

Raheel Mohammed, Maslaha Project
Young Foundation, London (UK)

Natalia Chan, Maslaha Project
Young Foundation, London (UK)

Alya Adamany, The Chicago Council on Global Affairs
Chicago, (USA)

Kyle Ismail, Inner-city Muslim Action Network (IMAN)
Chicago, (USA)

For an introduction to the health strand of Maslaha, have a look at the Diabetes in Tower Hamlets website. Maslaha’s pilot project looks at health issues in Tower Hamlets, a London borough with one of the highest levels of religious diversity in the UK. The interactive website offers advice on diet, exercise, and Ramadan both from a medical and Islamic perspective and is used by both medical staff and patients to help advise on diabetes.

Time: Tuesday, April 29, 2009

9:00 — 10:00 (CDT Chicago)
10:00 — 11:00 (EDT Canada and US)
15:00 — 16:00 (UK and Ireland)
16:00 — 17:00 (Germany and EU)

Registration is now closed. Look for the archived webinar in the next few days.

These are free, open learning events.*
* Registration is limited, so please register early.
* No special technical requirements; see registration for details.

For further information: citiesofmigration@maytree.com.

Speakers

Raheel Mohammed, Maslaha Project
Young Foundation, London (UK)
Raheel leads on the Maslaha project, which focuses on promoting a greater understanding of Islam for Muslims and non-Muslims and finding practical solutions for Muslim communities and public services in areas such as health and education. Maslaha’s health strand is currently leading the way in the UK in combining faith and medical advice in helping to change patients’ behaviour.

Raheel has also been profiled in The Guardian newspaper, in a supplement focusing on social pioneers. He was selected for the Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow Conference in Doha, as well as taking part in the Religion and Democracy in Europe Initiative, the US International Visitor Leadership Program and the UK Race and Europe Network’s project on ‘Muslim Youth and Active Citizenship’. He has also spoken on a number of issues: at the Royal Geographical Society about global citizenship and and democracy; and at the 2008 NHS London conference - ‘Innovating for a World City’.

Raheel also helped set up and was the Assistant Director at the Offscreen Education Programme, advising on and initiating education programmes designed to raise awareness of Middle East and Muslim cultures through art in partnership with organisations such as the British Museum and City Hall. He has a background in journalism and has written a number of articles around issues facing Muslim communities, including an article in Time Out magazine for which he was awarded awarded the CRE Race in the Media award. After the July 7 bombings he worked with a number of reconciliation and inter-faith organisations to help them focus on the most relevant issues facing young Muslims today.

Natalia Chan, Maslaha Project
Young Foundation, London (UK)
Natalia Chan is Research Associate for Maslaha. She has previously worked at the Young Foundation in a variety of roles, including external affairs, developing the Young Foundation website to a high standard, as well as providing in-depth research on a range of issues such as leadership and penal reform. as well as working in a variety of roles at the Young Foundation, including providing in-depth research on a range of issues such as leadership and penal reform.

Her experience of creating new opportunities and developing innovative strands of work with the Sudan Associate Parliamentary Group have proved invaluable in developing Maslaha’s health work and relationships with potential partners. She has used film to enhance parliamentary relations between the two countries, including producing a film on the political status of women in Sudan, and has organized a visit from a delegation of representatives of Sudanese Parliament and civil society to the UK.

Natalia has also worked with organizations such as the Sudanese Red Crescent Society and London Youth to build organizational capacity.

Alya Adamany, Senior Program Officer
The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, Chicago (USA)
Alya Adamany is a senior program officer for studies at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. A staff member since 2003, Alya is responsible for research, planning, and the logistical execution of task forces and study groups, including the Council’s 2007 Task Force on the Civic and Political Integration of Muslim Americans and the 2006 Chicago-Birmingham Dialogue “Muslim Communities in Domestic and Foreign Policymaking in the United States and United Kingdom: Empowerment and Engagement.” In addition, she cochaired the Council’s GOAt initiative (Globally Occupied Attention) in 2005. She also currently serves on the auxiliary board of Teach for America’s Chicago Chapter. Alya received her B.A. in political science with a focus on International Relations from Yale University and her M.A. in international relations from the University of Chicago, with a specialization in the Middle East and security studies. Alya previously held internships at the U.S. House of Representatives and Amnesty International.

Kyle J. Ismail, Associate Director
Inner-city Muslim Action Network (IMAN), Chicago (USA)
Kyle Ismail has a B.A. in Communications/Journalism and an M.A. in American history from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale where he lectured in American and world history and an M.A. in Human Resources Management from University of Illinois at Urbana Champagne. He is a long-time volunteer with IMAN ’s Project Restore focusing on education and outreach. Ismail was certified by the Lincoln Foundation for Business Excellence in quality management of government and non-profit organizations

For our second event in the 2009 series, the Cities of Migration brought together the cities of London, Chicago and Toronto to discuss the innovative ways that the Maslaha Project is using religion and cultural tradition to provide practical health advice and promote intercultural understanding both across and within cultural communities.

From the UK we were joined by Raheel Mohammed, Project Lead Maslaha Project (The Young Foundation) and his colleague Natalia Chan as well as Alya Adamany of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs with a community perspective from Kyle Ismail from the Chicago Inner-City Muslim Action Network (IMAN). Also joining us were participants from across the US, Europe and the UK.

If you missed the event, you can watch the archived event here [coming soon].

Event description.

Visit Good Ideas in Integration: Dealing With Diabetes: The Maslaha Project.

Ramazan Sulman was six when he left Istanbul and moved with his family to Hannover, a major city centre in northern Germany. Since Ramazan was able to learn German much faster than his parents, he soon began acting as the family interpreter. Years later, these experiences were what inspired him to develop the idea of an intercultural service network to help bridge the gap that newly arrived immigrants, like his family often experience as they settle into their new homes.

Today, Ramazan Salman is the Executive Managing Director and co-founder of the Ethno-Medical Centre (Ethno-Medizinisches Zentrum - EMZ), the organisation that developed the award winning “MiMi - With Migrants for Migrants” programme (Mit Migranten für Migranten - MiMi).

The MiMi programme recruits, trains and supports individuals from within immigrant communities to become cultural mediators who can help navigate new and different ways of dealing with traditions of health and illness and the body. The goal of the program is to make the German health system more accessible to immigrants, increase their health literacy while simultaneously empowering immigrant communities by prompting their direct participation in the process.

This two way dynamic is one of the unique aspects of MiMi. The programme targets socially integrated immigrants as candidates for intercultural mediator training and then recruits recent immigrants to participate in the community group sessions that are led by MiMi mediators drawn from their own community.

The MiMi approach is based on the belief that migrants are experts in their own causes and that as a community, they have experiences and resources that need to be better leveraged.

“Our Project sees immigrants as an important human resource for the future development of our society. Not only do most of them integrate quite well, but they also provide financial, cultural and social benefits for German society. MiMi promotes both integration and the building of bridges between cultures,” says Ramazan Salman.

Candidates for the mediator training are recruited from local immigrant communities and then provided with over 50 hours of training. Once they are certified, they can begin to plan and conduct information sessions. These sessions are tailored to be culturally sensitive for the particular community and are held in their preferred language. The discussion ranges from understanding and navigating the German health system to community specific health issues.

In co-operation with 80 other health related organisations, MiMi also regularly produces and updates a Health Guide that is available in over 16 languages. This guide provides information on targeted health topics and insight into understanding and navigating the German health system. The goal is to help immigrant communities increase their use of available resources - particularly around preventative care and early check-ups. MiMi regularly monitors and tracks the success of these publications as well as their other program in order to revise components or specific modules as needed. The result is that the content is always being updated and continues to reflect the needs of target communities.

Success…

Developed by the Ethno-Medical Centre, the MiMi programme was launched in 2003 in cooperation with BKK Bundesverband (Federal Association of Company Health Insurance Funds) as a pilot in four cities of the federal states of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. It has expanded to 38 cities in Lower Saxony, Hessen, North-Rhine-Westphalia, Brandenburg, Baden-Württemberg, Rhineland-Palatinate, Bavaria, Hamburg, Bremen and Schleswig-Holstein.

An unexpected success of the program has been the ability of MiMi to engage with immigrant women and to help them assume leadership roles in their communities. The majority of the intercultural mediators are women and evaluations of the program show their strong support for the training.

For his innovative and entrepreneurial work in creating MiMi, in 2006, Ramazan Sulman was awarded with the Ashoka Fellowship as Social Entrepreneur of the Year. In December of 2008, he was named Germany’s “Social Entrepreneur” in a competition organized by the Schwab Foundation (specifically Professor Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum in Davos), The Boston Consulting Group and under the patronage of the German Chancellor Dr. Angela Merkel.

One of the most impressive and interesting angles of the New Haven Elm City ID story was the way that the Mayor’s Office there was able to successfully get much of the city on board with the program - yes there was dissention, protests and even death threats but the law was passed and the ID’s were issued. Last Sunday’s New York Times “Remade in America” series showcased just how unique the New Haven and subsequent San Francisco experience has been.

The article looked at the political dilemma of Mayor Herbert A. Gears, from Irving Texas. Described as an “immigrant friendly Democrat with deep political ties to Hispanic leaders” Mayor Gears nevertheless passed a law that required an immigration check be done on everyone booked into the local jail. The resulting deportations have “made [me] the hero of every redneck in America.”

So why’d he do it? Anti-immigration pressure was building in his town, his opponent in the last election was campaigning on even harder line actions and looked like he might win and the town next door to Irving had recently taken even more energized and aggressive measures towards illegal immigration. The hope was that a middle of the road path like this would help.

But the result so far, has been the Mexican Consul in Dallas issuing warnings to stay away from Irving and the local Walmart has been complaining that Irving is driving away their Hispanic customers.

The lesson? That until the US decides on a national policy around the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, it will be up to cities and city politicians to find a way to make their local situation work as best they can….