Project Renaissance: Haj Festival Gathering 17.11.2010 - Highlights - Mohammed Mafaz

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Abbas Ramzy

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Dec 9, 2010, 12:48:24 AM12/9/10

From: Mohammed Mafaz
Sent: Tuesday, 07 December, 2010 2:18 PM

Theme: The role of the PPA in the development of the school

Despite having issued about 1500 notices regarding the Eid Gathering after the Eid Prayers on 17.11.2010, we had a turnover of about 40 attending the meeting, unfortunately maybe due to the bad weather conditions that prevailed throughout the evening. A slideshow of the "Zahirian Parade" photos were displayed prior to the commencement of the meeting.

Anyway the scheduled programs started few minutes from the mentioned time with Bro. M.F.M. Rikaz reciting the verses of the Holy Quran with subtitles.

Puttalam Zahira College Principal and the President of the Past Pupils Association Alhaj.S.M.M. Anwer gave the welcome address.

Following his welcome address Bro. Mafaz did a Power Point presentation highlighting the progress of the PPA, and its future intentions to strengthen the learning capabilities of students morally. He also stressed the needs and necessity of a strong Past Pupils body to visualize the plans and dreams. A short slide show of the present physical environment of the school was also shown towards the end of the speech.

During the presentation, the Past Pupils Association Vice President Mr. B.M Ifthikar handed over a microphone(the first ever donation of the present Past Pupils Association) to School Principal Alhaj. S.M.M. Anwer. May Allah bless all who made the contribution for the donation.

Next, Mr. M.F.M. Humayoon, Sectional Head for Grade 9,10 and 11 shared a few views of the present situation of the school. He highlighted the problems prevailing among the student community and the various measures taken up by the school administration to uplift the learning and moral skills of students. He urged the need of developing the moral and religious values of the present student community. The absence of Parents when called for meetings was a core issue put forward. He requested to form an action committee among the Past Pupils society to work along with the school administration to regularly meet parents of concerned students, and also briefly mentioned the need of a proper modern speaker system for conducting the General Assemblies in a proper way.

PPA Secretary Bro. Iflal followed up with adding some points missed by Bro. Mafaz regarding the progress, mentioning the plan to conduct an Anti-Drugs Campaign based on the set of modules package sent by an anonymous Past Pupil.

Discussion Time:

Bro. Imthath (An officer working at ICRC, Colombo) mentioned the need of a proper constitution for the Past Pupils Association to:

Avoid future conflicts within the Association
To be able to initiate project fund requests at various organizations locally and internationally

Also he highlighted the need of transparency in financial issues and also the need of a proper fund management

To avoid misunderstandings
To avoid the extra expenses going from the Committee members' own pockets so far.

Bro. Dr. Rajabdeen Abdul Muqsith (Senior Lecturer, Monash University, Malaysia) shared some valuable information of his own experience locally and abroad, and different measures and methods in the uplifting of the moral and learning skills of the students.

He described an objective based approach to core subjects during teaching and preparing exam papers.
Prioritizing the set of ethical values and working on it towards the students and then moving the focus towards the next set of characters expected.
The step by step measures in organizing the Anti Drug campaign.
The need of Soft skills and behavioral development
The need of engaging the Teachers and Students as core participants in this development process.

He indeed compared and contrasted the ground situations with few examples locally and in Malaysia, which was indeed a very interesting and thought provoking issue during his speech.

Bro. Marikkar (IT Application Specialist, Kingdom University of Bahrain) shared the following views:

Stressed the planning of a moral environment
Planning of how much ethical and religious values could be taught along with the normal syllabus
Getting the various help and the engagement of resource personnel from abroad
Development of a Code of Conduct for students.
Development of a phenomena where everyone could engage in the development of the school.
Introduction of modern fund raising procedures through websites etc.