Salam and Hi all,

As some of you may already know, I am planning a visit to Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, in October 2018. This trip will be with a delegation from Lonely Orphans, a charity which has been helping with the Rohingya cause for a number of years now. The ongoing Rohingya crisis has been one quite dear to me, knowing friends and family who have been affected on a personal level and trying to raise awareness of their plight on social media and in person as much as possible. Some of the projects that Lonely Orphans are working on are in my opinion, absolutely brilliant, and much needed in these environments. I’ll give some information about this briefly below.

First and foremost, I wanted to let those of you who may have not heard of Lonely Orphans, of what they do.

Since 2013, Lonely Orphans have been working directly with the Rohingya community, providing them with hope and real change, from Housing, Healthcare, Food, and Water Aid, to Education where they have set up schools and orphanages inside Rohingya Refugee Camps, such as Nayapara, Kutupalong, Balukhali, etc.

Lonely Orphans currently have five orphanages and five schools, providing free education and resources to 1,000 Rohingya children.

In this upcoming trip which I shall be a part of, we will be working on the following:

- To deliver much-needed aid to the Rohingya refugees:

o Medical aid

o Educational resources for refugee children

o Build shelters

o Dig water wells

o Build toilets

o Provide Solar Powered Street Lamps in the Refugee Camps o Distribute Winter Packs for the coming cold weather

o Distribute Aid (based on needs assessment)

Some of the above are extremely crucial. Sanitation and access to safe water is a basic human right, and I hope to help in setting up much of this as possible.

One of the other projects which I hold quite dear to my heart and which I’m sure many of you will as well is the installing of solar-powered street lamps in the Refugee camps. As you may know, many kidnappings, attacks, and devastatingly enough, rape, is carried out due to the lack of safe roads and lit areas, allowing for such actions to be carried out rather easily. To provide this infrastructure for our sisters and brothers, and to know that we can together help even one person be safer, will be something that we can be held accountable for slightly easier in front of them, and in front of Allah.

I have set a small target of £5,000.00. It may seem big initially, but when we all get together and help, I know we will race to the goal. As I will be going there myself, rest assured that your donations will be going directly.

Till then, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I will be documenting the journey via some social media platforms, so do stay tuned to see glimpses into the hardship of our extended family, the Rohingya community.