“Love for one’s country is integral to faith.” This prophetic tradition is a core value that the Dawoodi Bohras follow to support their mission to promote peace and provide support to individuals and communities.
One way that they have adhered to their mission was with their recent partnership with Habitat for Humanity, where through their Project Rise initiative they helped tackle housing problems in seven cities across the United States, including the San Francisco Bay Area.
Primarily based in western India, the Dawoodi Bohras is a Muslim community that follows a specific school of thought within the Islamic faith. The first Dawoodi Bohra arrived in the United States in the 1920s, and now nearly 20,000 Dawoodi Bohras live in 31 centers across the states. The community has over one million community members worldwide.
Project Rise started in India back in 2018, with a simple vision that marginalized communities should not be denied access to basic human needs, like food security or homes. Since then, the idea has spread across the world to encompass six key areas of sustainable development: food and nutrition, healthcare, education, environment, water and sanitation and women’s empowerment. Local programs host food drives, clean ups, tree-plantings and health camps year round.
Within the last few years, Project Rise has given the U.S.A. Dawoodi Bohras multiple partnerships across North America, including Toronto, Chicago, Detroit, California Volunteers (Office of the Governor), Second Harvest (Feeding America) in Orange County and Habitat for Humanity. With Habitat for Humanity, the USA Dawoodi Bohras contributed money to start community-driven “Build Days,” where volunteers assist in building homes for homeless people within the span of a day.
“Housing and infrastructure is one of the focus areas of Project Rise, and while it’s easier to contribute towards that in other places around the world, it’s not so much in the states,” Dawoodi Bohra community outreach coordinator Sakina Diwan says. “Partnering with Habitat gave us the chance to contribute to a niche sector that is actually so crucial in the US given the affordability crisis.”
According to Diwan, the Build Days were made this year to simultaneously mark both Eid, which is the celebration at the end of the Holy Month of Ramadan, and America’s 250th anniversary. Through the Build Days, Habitat affiliates helped map out locations and provided volunteer counts, while Diwan and others motivated teams, and made sure their messaging was aligned and things operated smoothly.
Two separate events took place during the Build Days. In one, volunteers joined their local construction team in Hayward to help paint and install flooring, windows and interior trim. The second group, primarily of younger volunteers, spent the day at a warehouse in Oakland designing, building and painting a children’s playhouse from scratch, to be donated to a local family.
According to a recent report, the Dawoodi Bohras have gathered 99 volunteers to help 42 people receive new homes across seven states. Future Build Days are in the works, and still have to be coordinated between Habitat for Humanity and the USA Dawoodi Bohras.
“Supporting a cause is one thing, but showing up in-person, giving time and manpower is where the real spirit of volunteerism lies,” Diwan says, after witnessing the results of the Build Days firsthand. “While corporations or organizations might do this on relative scales, this contribution coming from a faith-based group of 150 families has proven that we all hold the capacity to do good for our neighbors and communities.”
Dawoodi Bohras
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