IslamicFamily: rooted in tradition and connected to a breadth of community

IslamicFamily is created to serve.

The Edmonton social change organization offers a wide range of essential services to all communities and faiths, including family support, mental health counselling, education and training, immigrant and refugee settlement, youth engagement and financial literacy to provide connection and empowerment.

Omar Yaqub, who heads IslamicFamily as their Servant of Servants, says that what grounds their work is a mission to encourage the flourishing of the whole person in the community through compassion, support, and advocacy.

“Our anchor,” Yaqub adds. “Is being rooted in a rich tradition and connected to the breadth of community.”

Edmonton has a fifth-generation Muslim community where the earliest settlers arrived before there was a Canada.

Population in that long-established community has exploded over the past two decades, with Muslim Edmontonians numbering nearly 90,000, according to Canada’s 2021 Census, up from 19,575 in 2001.

Approximately one in 15 city residents identify as Muslim and the historic Al-Rashid Mosque, established in 1938, is Canada’s oldest purpose-built mosque.

Now in their fourth decade, IslamicFamily’s 2025 impact included the distribution of 6,200 food hampers, over 1,000 holistically integrated counselling sessions, the processing of nearly 160 refugee sponsorship applications for federal review, 175 housing clinics, 100+ financial literacy classes, more than 700 youth engaged, and hosting frequent community events at their Hüb.

Fundamental to the organization’s approach is a recognition of the importance of addressing underlying causes of community need and their interconnectedness.

Yaqub cites the complex issues that might require someone to ask for something as basic as nutrition for their family.

“To address an issue like that,” he says “We must look at what the barriers are? How do we address belonging? How do we address deficiencies in the way we provide service, and how can we do that in a way that’s more holistic?”

Working with others outside of the Muslim community to connect isolated cultures and build partnerships is central to IslamicFamily’s promise to encourage systems change.

“The day-to-day challenges we have are already so enormous, but it’s important we reserve time to work on the systemic issues,” says Yaqub. “If we were doing it by ourselves, it would be almost impossible, but if we’re going hand in hand with other agencies, other communities, [then] many hands make light work.”

One initiative that exemplifies this approach is IslamicFamily’s Civic Youth Fellowship Training.

The youth development and leadership program, which receives funding from the Catherine Donnelly Foundation, is designed to address systemic barriers to participation within Edmonton’s social and civic sectors, particularly for equity-deserving youth from racialized communities.

By collaborating with key partners including the City of Edmonton, The Africa Centre, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, ASSIST, and kihêw waciston – MacEwan University, IslamicFamily provides participants with a series of educational workshops and cross-cultural dialogue sessions to empower youth, educate city and school board staff on cultural sensitivity, create shared resources that promote equity, diversity, and inclusion and promote institutional change.

Participants spend a month-long mentorship opportunity in a municipal office, with a city counselor or in other civic-centred spaces.

The Civic Youth Fellowship comes out of the question of how to address belonging.  Part of the answer is through building connection.

Young people identify a problem and are empowered to seek solutions and action by engaging with a senior bureaucrat, a local politician or others they’ve met.

“It’s neat to see the City recognize people coming with lived experience, new cultural perspectives, and then [having those ideas] integrated into the system to address challenges we’re seeing,” Yaqub says.

He references a young woman who advocated for action on international student housing which prompted the City’s housing department to work on the challenge.

The Fellowship is also proving a successful steppingstone for those who want to work in civic and social affairs or government with many of the 60 program graduates finding meaningful work in these sectors.

IslamicFamily can be proud of their impact in many areas of city life, but when asked what offers hope in their work Yaqub speaks of the Civic Youth Fellowship.

“The day-to-day work, the news cycle, can be really daunting.

The fact we see more and more people needing food banks, the complexity of the cases we see, the geopolitical environment, these are things that would cause any living soul grief,” says Yaqub. “But seeing youth view those same challenges and try to address them with curiosity and a fresh mindset, I think those are the vitamins, the supplements, the reinforcement we need to be able to keep going.”

(Source: The Catherine Donnelly Foundation - https://catherinedonnellyfoundation.org/updates/islamicfamily-rooted-in-tradition-and-connected-to-a-breadth-of-community/)