The year it became a real club

Before this, the MSA existed on paper. Meetings happened when someone remembered to call one. There was no structure, nobody knew who was responsible for what, and if you missed a month you had no way of finding out what you missed.

That changed. Meetings went on an actual schedule. Roles got written down and assigned to people by name. And daily Dhuhr prayer was set up in the auditorium, 1:15 to 1:35, every school day. That last one took real work with the school to get approved, and it is still the most useful thing the club has ever done. It runs whether or not anybody comes to a meeting.

The Palestine jersey fundraiser

In January the club sold $20 Palestine jerseys at both Jumu’ah prayers at MALV, the 12:15 and the 1:15. Hand-drawn boards, a folding table, and members working it the whole time.

We raised money and every dollar of it went to Palestine. None of it was kept for the club. It sold out in a day.

That is the thing worth understanding about it: nobody had done a fundraiser at that scale here before, and it worked on the first try because people actually showed up to run it.

Ramadan, then Eid

Programming ran through the month, and the room was full the week before Ramadan even started. Then Eid al-Fitr, and Eid al-Adha after it. By the end of the year people across the school knew what the MSA was, which had not been true in September.

It did not go perfectly. Things got planned late, a lot of it ran on one or two people, and almost none of it got written down or photographed. That is exactly why this year is built with more structure, and why this page exists at all.

This year

Meetings twice a month, every month, September through June. Seasonal movie nights at the masjid, which are where the real money comes from. A charity drive kept completely separate from club funds, so there is never a question about where money went.

A service-hour program that is actually logged and signed, because Whitehall requires 12 hours to graduate and most people put it off until they panic. And an end-of-year trip the club pays for itself, with members voting on where it goes.

In progress. This page fills in as the year happens.