Updated 8 February 2011
This Mahe Muharram the Health Improvement Board of The Council of European Jamaats launched a new initiative aimed at improving the overall health of the community through the encouragement of exercise and the recognition of its importance in one’s life.
This scheme, entitled The AL-Hijra Movement, provided pedometers to each Jamaat in the UK at cost price, enabling each member to purchase one and monitor the total distance they walked per day.
The goal was to unite the national UK community to walk 100 miles - one fifth of the distance towards Sham from Karbala.
Utilising this route, participants connected and commemorated the calamities suffered by the Ahlul bayt (AS), whilst being encouraged to increase their walking each day, even through simple means such as using the stairs over escalators.
Through integrating the commemoration of the calamities of Karbala and Sham and healthy living, we aimed to improve the physical and spiritual health of our community.
A website was set up to allow members to input their total daily steps, and members were then informed of their total distance walked per day, and the cumulative total of all participants.
We also offered health advice and encouragement on the site, aiming to show that staying healthy does not have to be time consuming and can easily be a part of our daily lives.
Alhamdulillah, through the Grace of Almighty Allah SWT we had more than achieved this target, accumulating a total of 400miles – four times our initial goal.
Furthermore the success of the scheme was evident, with many members partaking across the UK jamaats commenting that seeing how much distance they had covered per day had inspired them to walk more often.
Unfortunately for the men folk of our community, the females have once again prevailed in participation, with 90% of women partaking in the scheme, compared with 10% men. Brothers, time to step away from those samosas and dust off those trainers I fear!
We thank Allah SWT for the success of the scheme and we pray that as a community we can continue to strive to better health Insha’Allah.