Moinul is driven to help on unity

Moniul Islam

A COMMUNITY stalwart who sacrifices his own time to help youngsters and parents has been nominated for a Pride in Oldham award.

Moinul Islam (35), from Chadderton, works as a senior learning mentor at Grange School to remove barriers to learning.

But he also involved in a host of voluntary activities and projects to unite the community.

He helped to get funding to produce thousands of copies of a DVD called “Our Future, it’s in Your Hands” to help teachers and parents tackle school and family issues.

It tells five short stories on school and parenting issues, including attendance, truancy, homework, smoking, discipline, and also touches on forced marriages.

It’s been recorded in Bangla with English subtitles and has the potential to be dubbed in other languages. This was seen as the best way to get messages into the community that doesn’t read or write in English or their mother tongue.

His Outta Skool project organises dance and martial arts instructors to teach children in free after-school classes across the borough.

He also runs a parenting group once a week, a nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) group as a trained adviser with the NHS, helps the charity Barnardo’s and translates benefits forms.

If that wasn’t enough he also set up the only Kabaddi (a popular Asian team game) organisation in the North-West and other games at Grange School to unite people through sport.

The married father-of-one was surprised at his nomination but admitted working late into the night to fit everything in.

He said: “It keeps me busy. I get job offers to do other things but I have always wanted to work in the community and for the community. People leave the school but still see you outside, talk to you and thank you for things you have done and it’s a great feeling.

“I just want to make a difference. You can live for ever through the work you leave behind. It’s leaving your mark in time so my children and grandchildren can say this is what I did. I believe in helping people. The community remember you for the good things you do.

“I enjoy doing these things. As a wise man once said, if you make your hobby your job you never got to work.”

Noor Jake (30), from Oldham, who has worked with Mr Islam and made the nomination, said: “He does so much work for the community. He gives up hours of his time. He does not think about what it costs him, if he thinks it will benefit the community he goes ahead and does it.

“I have seen him working at 5am trying to complete a project. He even gives up his time to help people fill in their benefit forms.

“He removes barriers to learning and helps people to succeed that are working in difficult circumstances and hard to reach parts of the community.”

To find out more about the projects, visit websites www.ourfutures.org.uk  and www.outtaskool.co.uk