Dawat-E-Islami Dewsbury Summer Retreat sees youngsters enjoy team sports and learn important life skills

A halal menu of various tasty Indian dishes, with mouthwatering milkshakes, samosas, kebabs, chips and pizzas, were also on the timetable for local youngsters, alongside the team sports, during this year's first Dewsbury Summer Retreat.

The whole initiative was the work of global Sufi-Muslim spiritual movement Dawat-E-Islami.

The free three-day youth playscheme was held last weekend from Friday, August 23 until Sunday, August 25 at the Ghausia Jamia Mosque based on Warren Street in Savile Town.

Those who signed up also got the opportunity to take part in regular CPR workshops while inside the mosque premises.

Speaking to the Reporter Series, Dawat-E-Islami's Regional West Yorkshire Youth Activities Coordinator, Mohammad Zaheer Atthari, said: “Dawat-E-Islami is a charitable movement working in some of the most deprived areas of the world. Our aim is to engage with some of the most hard to reach families.

“Dawat-E-Islami has also over these last twenty years been doing a lot of much needed work in a number of regions across England. West Yorkshire and Kirklees are one of those regions - with a particular focus for us on Dewsbury town.

“Our volunteers are at the moment organising a wide range of different activities, especially for the youth in a number of neighbourhoods across Dewsbury.

“These activities have been educational to begin with, where there has been learning through fun.

“We nurture our children in a friendly, welcoming atmosphere after taking them off the streets. But we have now decided to branch out even further.

“Besides offering a lovely mosque environment on Warren Street in Savile Town over the weekend where the children joined in doing spiritual 'Zikr' meditation, as well as praying five times a day, our Dewsbury Summer Retreat also allowed the kids to get the opportunity to develop vital life skills through team sport activities and first aid CPR.”

As one of the Dewsbury Summer Retreat supervisors, Zaheer Atthari explained the reasons for having CPR workshops in the playscheme.

He said: “It's a well known disturbing fact that rates of coronary heart disease have been higher than the national average for a long time in North Kirklees and especially in the Dewsbury area.

“For any child to see a member of the family having a heart attack at home can be a very frightening experience.

“The trauma can escalate while members of the household are waiting for the ambulance and paramedics to arrive. The long wait usually turns into a state of frustrating despair and panic, especially when people don't know what to do.

“Yet the chances of survival however for a person who has a cardiac arrest or a heart attack are far higher when the child is able to explain to another adult how to carry out a CPR. The kid may even have the confidence to do the CPR himself.

“So there was an element of life skills education in our Dewsbury Summer Retreat.

“The whole of the Summer Retreat's aim was to support the idea of helping improve people's quality of life opportunities. This is also one of Dawat-E-Islami's overall aims.”

The Dawat-E-Islami project was set up in 1982. The initative works overseas in deprived locations of the world where children and young people from Muslim faith backgrounds do not have access to free education or free healthcare services.

The Dawat-E-Islami project currently provides free Maddrassah classes and free sports activities to thousands of Muslim students in places like the Indian Sub-Continent, Africa and Europe.

Its volunteers also deliver free food parcels to those families living on low incomes through Dawat-E-Islami's FGRT (Faizan Global Relief Foundation). The movement has now also seen a need to work in England.