Herndon, Virginia, USA 20172 [email protected]

What We Do

Since the inception of the foundation in 2001, Mafiq Foundation grew from one event to over five unique events with enhanced content and offerings over the years. These events were initially organised in the Greater Metro DC-Maryland-Virginia(DMV) area and have slowly grown in popularity far and wide. With events being conducted virtually, in-parts or in full, students from around the globe get an opportunity to participate in these events.

 

 

At present, Mafiq Foundations conducts following events annually and intends to scale up in future Inshaa’ Allah:

 

Essay Panel Competition: Since 2002, The Mafiq Foundation has been organising the annual Essay Panel Competition for elementary, middle, and high school students. Every year, an overall Islamic theme is selected for each age group. Typically, over 100 participants each year write essays within a word limit and orally present it in front of multiple judges and audience. Mafiq has also introduced poster and multimedia competitions within this category to encourage the use of modern technology in the Muslim youth. These activities have inspired intellectual abilities within the youth that is evident in their writing, speaking, and multimedia presentations. Collections of top ranked essays written by Grades 1 to 12 students are published regularly in a series of books titled.

 

Young Muslim Voices (YMV) in multiple volumes. YMV is a compilation of selected essays submitted at our annual EPC. YMV captures a unique snapshot of our youths’ thought process on topics of Islamic Interest and the historical collection in YMV could play a vital role in defining the roadmap for future generations.

 

Muslim Youth Debate Tournament (MYDT): Since 2006, Mafiq has also been organizing annual debate tournaments in the middle and high school levels. These debates are in parliamentary form where teams of three speakers prepare arguments supporting or opposing a given debatable statement. Within the competition, each team debates three times, the first two debate topics being announced prior to the competition and the last round being impromptu. All the debate topics are related to the present day American Muslim Society. Throughout the year, Mafiq Foundation also organises separate debate workshops to train participants as well as judges on the rules and structure of the parliamentary debate. This unique competition enables our Muslim youth to think critically and voice their argumentative opinions in a respectable manner. Through MYDT, many debaters from our workshops have moved forward and became influential debaters in their individual universities. In the past, Mafiq has also showcased this program in the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and Islamic Community of North America (ICNA) annual conventions. The popularity of MYDT has spiked so much that ICNA has invited Mafiq to organise MYDT on a national level under the ICNA umbrella. This demonstrates the value and potential of this program

 

Muslim Youth Scholar Training Internship (MYSTI): Since 2013,, Mafiq has additionally organized scholarship programs each year for Muslim high school seniors, undergraduate, and graduate college students who are interested in doing socio-cultural scientific research. This program offers a summer-long opportunity to pursue scientific investigation of relevant social issues regarding the Muslim community, global environment and society, and how all of these interact. The socio-scientific research hypotheses are usually picked from the agenda of current Muslim issues, proposed by the students and assisted by their assigned research advisors. Through this program, students are taught how to write research papers and how to gather and analyse data to support a hypothesis.

 

COOOL Summer Program: Since 2016, Mafiq has organized a week-long summer program for middle and high school students in two tracks, namely Research Internship Preparatory and Cybersecurity training. The first track teaches students the foundational concepts of Islamic and Scientific research methodologies, the art and science of developing a research proposal, and different analytical tools and software (like Excel, Data visualization tools, and web development tools), which allow them to analyze statistical data sets and carry on the research goals. The second track is based on the premise of creating producers as opposed to consumers in the internet society and teaches students the basics of building their own web through web development tools and Python programming as well as the fundamentals of cyber security and safety. The basic idea of this program is to keep the youth engaged in full-day activities where the students are not only learning inside the classroom, but also engaged outside of the classroom through games and relevant outdoor activities

 

Muslim Youth Hackathon (MY Hack): Since 2022, Mafiq also started an annual event to encourage technical innovation and collaboration for high-school students and older. It is a weekend long sprint-like event where teams exercise imagination and use technology to innovate for social good. This helps participants learn new skills, meet new people and use technology to unlock new possibilities in an inclusive environment.