WMS Beneficiaries
“When a man dies, his deeds come to an end except three: sadaqah jariyah (continuous charity), beneficial knowledge that is passed on,
and a pious child who prays for him.”
Narrated by Rasulullah s.a.w in Muslim
Net income from WMS will go to the following beneficiaries
Religious Institutions
Our mosques and madrasah currently lack sustainable long-term funding. In the next 30 years, it is projected that they will need more than $20 million for land lease renewals. Without your support, our religious institutions could disappear and fall to disrepair.
Sustaining Our Mosques
Currently, funds donated to mosques are mainly used to fund its operational costs including salaries of mosque staff (e.g., imam and asatizah), utilities, repairs and maintenance, social programmes and more.
Other existing community funds like Zakat and the Mosque Building and Mendaki Fund (MBMF) are similarly spent on immediate and short-term needs. MBMF particularly, while it can sustain costs for mosque building and upgrading, they are not sufficient to finance lease renewals. With multiple back-to-back land lease renewals upcoming, we need to start planning now to ensure our mosques continue to exist.
WMS will help co-pay for lease renewals and move our mosques closer towards being self-sustaining.
Supporting Our Madrasah
Our six full-time madrasah in Singapore are primarily self-funded private educational institutions. They rely heavily on community contributions (including funds from MBMF, Dana Madrasah, OurMadrasah.SG, Wakaf Ilmu and other grants) to finance their programmes and operating costs. School fees only support less than 30% of their expenditures. With its current funding scheme, the sector must organise annual ad-hoc fundraisings to cover existing funding shortfalls.
With support from WMS, our madrasah can dedicate less resources for ad-hoc fundraising activities and focus more on providing quality education.
Asatizah Development
In the next 30 years, more than $250 million is needed to develop our asatizah sector. The Committee of Future Asatizah (COFA) has identified various challenges faced by the workforce. If we do not start planning for our asatizah now, this resource could deplete, and our children may not have asatizah of calibre who can continue to lead and guide our community.
Developing Our Asatizah of the Future
In 2019, COFA was convened to develop a vision for our asatizah of the future.
In a report (2020) by the committee which engaged over 1,900 local stakeholders including madrasah students and asatizah, challenges faced by the workforce was identified: “…Unattractive career prospects, uncompetitive salaries, …insufficient training and developmental opportunities, inadequate preparation for employment in the future economy, and uncertainty if they (asatizah) can excel in other fields of work.”
Asatizahs are an important resource for our community. They play a critical role in providing guidance to our community, a plural society, at all levels and through changing times. To fulfil this purpose, COFA highlighted the need to revitalise the sector by developing, strengthening and professionalising our asatizah.
WMS will contribute some of its net income towards COFA’s initiatives to elevate the asatizah sector.
Community Initiatives
More than $17 million is needed in the next 30 years to ensure that in times of crises, the underprivileged in our community receive the necessary support, and our socio-religious programmes continue to run. If we do not plan for rainy days now,
we might be putting our future at stake.
Empowering Our Community Initiatives
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, many families in the Singapore Muslim community were financially impacted. Our mosques too experienced a drop in income when donations collected for its operations, community programmes and assistance, fell by more than 25%.
In the years to come, decreasing birth rates and an ageing population may lower the funding pool and, at the same time, see increased expenditures to meet the needs of our ageing community.
Some net income from WMS will be set aside as reserve funds to uplift our community in times of crises and help provide sustainable funding for regular socio-religious programmes and initiatives.
