 All right that's better hopefully those at home can hear me okay so we are here for the candidate forum for the 2023 MCC board of directors election so everybody that is of voting for MCC that tonight at nine o'clock in your inbox you'll be getting a ballot and the election will be going until five p.m. on October 15th five p.m. on October 15th if for whatever reason you think you're supposed to get a ballot and you have not received it it's a quick email to elections at MCCEspay.org and the commission will get back to you and look into why you haven't got your ballot and then make sure you get that inshallah so we have maybe five candidates that we'll hear from tonight inshallah each one will speak for about five minutes about their vision and how they plan to serve the MCC board of directors you know it could be five minutes or less than five minutes and then we'll just hear from them and then those that are watching online if you type your questions into the chat box inshallah we are monitoring them and we will ask them to the candidates inshallah so we're going to go with an alphabetical order inshallah first we'll be hearing from the candidates for secretary as we know sister Hamera Nawaz is running for president and she's running unimposed this year and so secretary is open and then we have two director at large positions open so for secretary we have brother Amir Malik and brother Amir Mustafa director at large positions we have sister Shaza Ashraf sister Isima Bader and sister Edlyn so sorry and so we'll be going through those and and we'll do them an alphabetical order so first we'll work we'll talk about secretary inshallah and first we'll hear from brother Amir Malik and go from there inshallah so brother Amir if you'd like to come up. Assalamu alaikum my name is Amir Malik I've been a MCC board member for about a year so just completing that term I'm looking to run for the position of secretary in this coming term my so my current role as a board of director is more helping with volunteering and facilities and landscaping and those type of things so focused and more on that on those areas my vision for MCC is to see it grow and become more you know a more active center and you know and provide my assistance where I can with the growth plans for you know recreational facilities like a new basketball court cafe school expansion things like that and also continue with you know with my whatever I can as far as this thing with the facilities work or landscape health and improvements and whatever we have going I also like to see us improve our collaboration with other centers in the community in the in the near area like San Ramon or Livermore or Fremont to have more collaborative programs one thing that I I think we should we currently don't is you know we hear about a lot of people going through or new kids looking for jobs or people lose their job so we should considering we are in the Bay Area and there's a lot of people work in the tech and all these areas so maybe we should have some you know some sort of program to assist with employment where we can people can post if they have job openings or provide assistance in terms of training and things like that we can also look to grow the youth programs like you know I think MCA has a Muslim camps where they take kids out and they spend a few days at a facility at some place some of those things are a lot of fun for our kids and you know grow them and and parents to get involved so some of those things that's about for the vision so thank you thank you weather armor so your fellow namesake um further armor Mustafa will be coming up next inshallah okay and I forgot to mention for those watching at home if you go in the description you can read the bio for every candidate inshallah so you just click on the the name and you can read the bio for every single person and what they've submitted to the auction board okay salaamu alaykum Bismillah Rahman Raheem my name is armor Mustafa so this this is going to be a little confusing for the people who are voting because not only is my opponent also named on there but we have the same initials as well am right armor Malik armor Mustafa anyways hopefully people can get past that and vote for the right candidate so um I moved to this community um in 2012 and I've been a boy I've been a member of the MCC since 2012 the the year I moved here and uh when I moved here I wanted to get involved with the masjid um so volunteered as a teacher at the Sunday school um I still volunteer at the Sunday school I help with the high schooler classes um and um I was also a former board member about five years ago I was the the VP um and um my vision for the MCC community is is our population is is growing and getting older um so growing meaning that we are having a lot of families move into the area and um we have a lot of youth and what I'd like to see is a structured program for the youth where we have I mean this community is over 10 years old right so we've had uh children grow up in the community they are now out there in the workforce there are they are doctors they are engineers you know they are entrepreneurs and we should tap into that as a resource for our up and coming youngsters and my vision for that is having a database where parents who have young children that are coming up they could tap into that database and look to see who would match well with them as a potential mentor for their young children and that matching would uh lead to uh communication and meetings with their the mentor and the mentee to kind of guide them because a lot of times you know children parents are busy they don't have the connections that other other parents do but if we have this this database with other youth that have gone through this community who are now in the next phase of their life and their careers that could really help the the the other youth that are up and coming to get them a strong foothold as they move into you know college or their work career so that's one the other is that I mentioned that the community is getting older right so there are a lot of community mentors that are older you know 75 plus and you know my parents are you know in their mid 80s and I see that uh they live in Toronto and Toronto uh has a really great community there is a musket in you know every neighborhood local neighborhood and they have great programs and my parents participate in the seniors program and what they do is they bring in uh professionals that help them do some basic exercises some basic arts and craft and it's a really good opportunity for the seniors in the community to get out there because what are they doing at home they're either on the iPad or watching TV right and they don't get an opportunity to to meet other people that are of their age and of their general mind mindset right so that's that's another thing that I'm hoping that's that this community can kind of get behind so that's the vision that I have some of the programs that I'd like to get started with the help of other board members and the community volunteers to step up and do these these type of stuff so that's what I would like to to say thank you thank you very much so now we'll be moving on to the director at large positions that these will be two candidates that you'll be choosing of three and we're going alphabetically here so the first candidate we'll be hearing from is Shazia Ashraf so my name is Shazia okay so my name is Shazia Ashraf I've been in this community of almost 20 plus years and we raise our family here with three boys so my vision for MCC is like getting more youth involved get more youth program for youth kids and get for the younger kids that we since we're coming back to MCC and we're having a sister Halaka and brothers Halaka coming back and boys Halaka we have little kids who are running around here so much we would like to get something for them to get done so that's my vision right now and help out with community whatever they need and listen to them whatever they need whatever way I can help them I will do that and then my vision the other is like brother Amir said get the cafeteria ready so I provide I helped Friday lunches here so I would like to get involved more into that and help out the community whatever way they need and listen to them what they need help with thank you so Shazia so next we will be hearing from sister Sima Bader inshallah we're going alphabetically by last name as brother Amir mentioned my name is Sima Bader I'm running for the at-large board position I've been living in Dublin California for the past couple years I've been an active member of MCC though for probably the last decade I raised my family here my husband and I with our two kids I've been actively involved in the masheed I taught for the past couple years I've been teaching the MCC Sunday school here and I now in my substitute as well so we always attend Juma here so involved in the community events and programs here as well my experience aligns with you know board positions I serve on a couple boards right now I'm on the board of Averi's High School which are as our local Bay Area Islamic High School I also serve on the a couple of non-religious boards as well I serve as a vice chair of the citizens bond oversight community committee for the Dublin school district I serve as the president of the Colbe elementary where my kids go my son goes to school I serve as president of the Muslim Democrats and Friends Club so a lot of extensive board experience I have I think in terms of vision is similar to the brothers and sisters who have spoken like I've loved to get you know make our masheed it already is so welcoming but make it more welcoming make you know it really a pleasant experience for our youth create programs that will make our especially our teenagers who at this time especially the way the school system's going the way the community is going they need to be aligned with our faith and our dean and it's important for us to engage them in the right areas and make them firm in our values and our beliefs so I really would value getting more you know mentors for mentor systems buddy systems for our teenagers creating more active you know weekends where they're here creating an environment that they want to be here you know more things that are enjoyable for their age groups whether it's the teenagers whether it's the youngsters I want to make sure that we you know foster that environment of kids wanting to come to the masheed again and again kids begging their parents to bring them to the masheed that's kind of like what I'd like to see in terms of you know spreading the love to our community and our members outside I'd love more interfaith programs in the community I'd love to you know give dava and that way to our community members who you know there's so many you know people who are interested in Islam who don't know I like to foster more programs that are make it more inclusive have more people come into our masheed more interfaith programs as well as you know education is the key working on how we can continue to educate build more workshops into our community for different types of things that you know that community values like I think a good way to do that is polling and serving the communities to hear what kind of things interest them and what makes what's excites them and what makes them want to come to the masheed to hear you know a lecture or a webinar or something and getting more more of that in I know MCC does a good job of that but like I think bringing more and bringing programs that really tie in the whole community as a whole my background is really in community service I am a connector a relationship builder so I you know in my day job I'm in development and fundraising so my whole job is around raising money and that's a really important part of being a board member of a masheed is bringing money to the organization and so I think that's somewhere where like my experience would be really helpful I've worked for care in their development and fundraising I've worked for right now look for work for a local nonprofit secure justice as your development director I worked I have a certified fundraising management certification so my background and my kind of education is aligned to fundraising and development which is extremely important I feel like for a masheed other than that I want our community to be one that's always giving back more service projects involving our children our youth and service our families and just being a masheed that gives back and creating more opportunities for that you know these are challenging times I want our masheed to be you know a place where we come to for for mental well-being I want to create more programs for mental health for you know all those things that our community is facing and during these times our children our family our families our marriages within our community you know those are things that are important to me you know furthering our use of technology and MCC is really great about live streaming and different things but building more technology into our into our masheed yeah in conclusion you know I really want a masheed that is inclusive that involves everyone that fosters education service interfaith dialogue and is really a welcoming space thank you thank you so we're going to hear now from our last candidate just want to mention for the those that are watching from home we will have an opportunity to ask questions so if you would like to type any question into your the chat box now we'll ask that question so last but certainly not least we have sister Edlin she'll have to talk about her vision for the directors at large so I'd like to thank everybody who's here and everybody who is watching the live stream I think it's a really great that you're willing to spend your time here paying attention to this election instead of all the other things that you could be doing so thank you for that I feel like I missed the memo about this five minute speech because I had no ideas coming but I'm going to wing it inshallah so my vision first of all I have been here in the community for about 10 years I have my husband brother Mojahed and my three kids and we love Dublin and we have like MCC is our second home for the kids and alhamdulillah we love this community and we feel blessed to be part of it and honestly it's an honor to be up here alhamdulillah as just a candidate to be able to serve the community alhamdulillah so I would like to say first of all that I think that alhamdulillah MCC is doing a great job mashallah with people like brother Menir leading the way we have you know widened the programming here at MCC mashallah and mashallah we've had the support of volunteers and you know alhamdulillah the community from young to old from new muslims to born muslims to you know the youth you know mashallah we have and for you know we have ethnic programs for the different communities etc etc we have so much programming mashallah and I would like to see that continue inshallah and grow one of I think you know main priorities you know for MCC whether or not and part of the board is to see some transparency and accountability I think that if you ask anyone who is a regular member of MCC you will see that they are happy with MCC and the programming that's happening here mashallah we do have a variety of programming and if the need comes up subhanallah from even like the special needs programming the you know programming the support from with muslim the partnership mashallah we have so much going on but I feel like the community is also seeking some transparency in terms of what's happening with the funds that MCC is raising and the promises that MCC is making to the community in terms of plans for you know the cafeteria or construction so I think that one thing I would like to see is transparency and regular updates from the board of trustees and the board of directors and I think that also accountability as someone who is possibly joining the board I would like to know exactly what I'm getting myself into and I'm not 100% sure that the roles and responsibilities of a board member and each board member is listed somewhere so I would like to see that I'd like to see the roles and responsibilities defined for the board of trustees as well as for the employees and I think this helps us understand why we're here and what we're supposed to be doing and what is expected of us but also it helps us to ensure that no one is getting overburdened and I feel like you know we see people the regular volunteers and Mashallah our employees brother Muneer sister Amina sister Arjman brother Mary Ways mashallah everybody has a lot on their place and I want to see that we're all pitching in and whether we're a board of trustees member a board of directors member or an employee everybody knows what they're supposed to be doing and we know that where our boundaries are and we know that we are fulfilling our responsibilities and our rights upon others here so that's that I have one minute left according to the timer I don't know how strict we're being about this but as my others have mentioned Mashallah we have a lot of programming serving all the different you know many different groups and if anyone feels like a group is being underserved please reach out to MCC one of my main priorities as a mom to two teenagers and one almost teenager is that we have more programming for youth especially the teens and I'm not talking about just like holoca types I think as teenagers they're probably you know focused on hanging out with friends and more like you know wanting things where I would need to ask them personally but I feel like what works well with the teenagers is um so having something more fun centered and then having other like learning opportunities working with them teaching them as part of that activity rather than having them sit in a room and just listen to speakers so I'd like to see more of that and again I would like to emphasize the fact that MCC runs on volunteers and the people like brother Munir who are facing these everybody day in and day out so I'd like to see more more more more volunteers like mashallah we have a great community I'd like to see more people getting in here and instead of overburdening one two three four ten people let's get you know people in short-term commitments rather than long-term commitments and just get everybody in here helping out real-life issues I would really like to I like when we see have programs that are really geared towards real-life problems that everybody is dealing with subhanallah we're Muslims but mashallah we have problems like every other group of people in this world marriage issues substance abuse issues issues with LGBTQ stuff going in honor in our families and without being judgmental I would like to see more programming providing practical non-judgmental support for our community members and lastly one of our as a going back to the fact that you know a lot of people are looking for you know the promises at that MCC is making and saying like what happened to those things so one of those items is social worker that the community was promised and subhanallah as if so for those of you who don't know first of all I wanted to say that my name a lot of you know me as Aisha so I'm a convert so I was born at Lynn but amongst the Muslim community I am often known as Aisha so some of my main responsibilities here at MCC has been working as a convert care coordinator for MCC and alhamdulillah during that time you know mashallah it's an honor and a blessing to work with people who are seekers looking into Islam and then taking that big step to change their lives and become Muslim and you know I have seen firsthand how much that just new Muslims just that category of people in this community how much heavy stuff that they're dealing with after they become Muslim with family members or within their marriages or whatever and they come to me they come to people like brother mania or sister Amina and it's a lot of heavy things that people are dealing with and this is just the new Muslims right there's everybody else for refugees and every you know other people in the community have a lot of things going on and this these are not things that you know employees regular employees or volunteers I can tell you from my own experience it's not something that I was able to handle it was very hard and I tried my best but we really do need a social worker to help out with these things because otherwise it's a severe burden on the volunteers and our employees and again going back to the accountability and transparency I'm really sorry I don't want to take too much time but going back to the accountability and transparency I think that is important that people know where their boundaries and you know their responsibilities lie and where they are experienced their expertise lies right so our expertise is not in being a social worker so we need someone an expert to deal with these problems so people are not overburdened so I don't want to bore you so I love and care for MCC I really would look forward to serving the community whether or not I'm on the board so alhamdulillah thank you so much for listening and that's all for me thank you so good mashallah beautiful so thank you all the candidates for your insight and your words so we see you we'll have mashallah there's about 40 50 people watching online right now and we want you to ask your questions of the candidates or just in general if you want to throw it out not necessarily for a candidate please do so until you get your courage to do so inshallah I'm going to walk around the room and with the mic and let's see if we have some questions in the room inshallah if that's okay but they're from the election committee yeah all right I'll walk around inshallah do you want us to unraise your hands yeah let's let's have everybody sit up here inshallah why not and then that way if there's a question we can easily just hand you the mic inshallah so first let's just give it a second for all our candidates to walk up and zoom out here so everybody can see their beautiful faces inshallah sorry if I knew I was going to moderate this I'd put some gel on my hair or something I just ran in here from the gym all right so if you have a question if you want to go ahead and raise your hand inshallah and I'll come with you with the mic all right so one thing I will ask then as we wait for questions to come online if there are some is one thing we heard about is the accountability and transparency and I'd like to see if we can hear from some of the other candidates inshallah about accountability and transparency especially you know what some of the promises have made to the community I think when it comes to accountability and transparency it's important to keep your community informed especially if promises are being made one thing that we can do for sure is check in with the community and hold more town halls hold more informational meetings where we're giving updates and regularly send more updates on the things that we are promising that's one way to keep you know transparent and you know also work that within our our board is make that a priority is to keep the community informed keep things transparent and you know that can be done through regular communication through your newsletter through town halls and get more getting the community more involved in what we're working on so yeah if you've been a member of this community for the last two three years you're you're familiar with some of the projects that have been talked about and money raised for those projects but I think there's a certain level of frustration with some of the community members on some of those promises not being fulfilled so yeah I think we need to have more town halls more communication out to the to the community and let them know what is going on so that we don't have community members you know feeling any type of animosity towards the center right so yeah I'm in all favor of making sure that the community is up to date and aware of all the projects and and why things have not progressed right so we need there needs to be accountability and so one of the things that you know I'd like to to put forth that you know when I come inshallah as one of your board members is to have that level of accountability with the center I agree with the transparency I think after being on the board for a year I you know I think some of the transparency issue comes from just having not having that communication it's not exactly that that either board you know board of directors or board of trustees are not telling the community some of the programs I think people don't understand take a very long time like you know for example let's say the basketball court it takes more than a year of getting permits and and approvals from city from the from our local neighborhood community and then there's so many you know the planning that it goes through in terms of getting what size fence can be what type of court can it be what size what so there's a lot of work that is being done in the background but I think where it where it's missing is just to have that communicated to the community to the lesson let them know that people are working on it and it it just takes a long time to get it approved so that's why it's delayed okay wonderful so any questions in the room okay as we wait for questions um I will ask one question so we talked about theory and how great the community is but let's talk about some one of the big challenges we're having right now is the parking at the first yoma and uh you know we're going full sometimes right before the sermon even starts for the first yoma and last Friday we had dining room only at the Dublin library so can you tell some some realistic some practical steps so we could take as board members to address these growing pains and for our community I think I mean you know we are obviously already you know added the Dublin library and we can possibly look for expanding that location see if there's another room available right now I would say probably 80 to 100 people again it can accommodate and the other thing is to really push community for carpooling you know obviously you know some people can't but you know if we really make that a big priority I think Brother Munir has really pushed for people come to second and third yoma which has really helped and you know I know even for my household people you know kids started going to second and third yoma is just saying you know let's just avoid the first one if you don't have to go you know so people who come to first yoma if they come for that that's the only one they can attend so that makes sense I don't think I have an answer for that I think we've experienced this parking issue for for a very long time for the last few years it was nice to have the HP building but I mean that solved all our problems right but we knew that eventually that would end and all we can do is try and communicate that for the benefit of the community so that everyone gets their prayers in is to focus on coming to the second or third yoma um I think that I don't have much to add other than looking for an additional space I think that again you know Brother Munir and Brother Murray's can't be everywhere so we're going to probably also need support at these additional locations from the community either like BOD, BOT whatever it is that support needs to be there and again like I think when people the community hears about these issues they are probably also wondering about what's going on here on this site like in terms of make expanding when can we you know when can the capacity get bigger here so other than that sorry not many ideas from hearing me on this one so something that immediately comes to my mind is third yoma is a time when we have the chance to have third yoma it's a time where our kids can come because it's after school having more engaging speeches that the kids want to listen to during for hodpa encouraging our kids and bringing our kids to the yoma I know it's hard for people who are working fathers who are you know it might be easier at some point but like encouraging our kids to come and that's one way to bring that you know first yoma is away from the first yoma is bringing our families to the third the ones especially who have kids teenagers in high school making sure they're coming to yoma so that's one way another way that I can think of is you know promoting the more better and you know not that others are better than others but like you know the ones that people are more likely to listen to and want to come to having them at the letter later jama so we have that opportunity and then also that it still goes with communication you know I know MCC does a great job communicating the issues but we can always be better we can always find new ways to you know get that communication out that hey this is not working you know we've already created this space that space is full like we need to make you know find ways in our schedules to to you know make this situation right by you know attending whenever we can to the later jamas I think it's it comes down to communication it comes down to having our families you know making jama a priority for our kids that making the third jama so that would be the two things that come to my mind mine is I do agree with everyone that I'm special with you when you said have a youth speaker so kids get connected with them so that's my main if we have a youth speaker then kids will come more and then the first jama will be solve that issue all right that's beautiful any questions in the room here they're beautiful so we did talk about increasing volunteer at mcc and getting short term volunteers so what are your ideas for you know getting those volunteers how are you going to encourage people to volunteer at the masjid all right just walking over with the mic here so I think getting volunteers is um we need somebody who can lead this effort so it's hard to get just get ask people and have them come like you know we always are asking mcc for people to come and volunteer I get brother many years emails all the time you know but I think having somebody specific that is related to this job as a volunteer coordinator they could be it could be a volunteer position but um somebody who's the people who I've noticed that worked well as what volunteer coordinators were people who generally have a good personality who are welcoming who smile a lot who make you feel welcome whenever you come to the masjid having someone like that leading the effort um we have a lot of like teenagers who need volunteer hours and they are you know this is a space where they can get those volunteer hours that they need for high school we shouldn't have no problem filling volunteer stuff like for I know like my daughters at a very it's like they're all the kids need volunteer hours I'm sure Dublin High all these places like we should have no problems I think the only issue is that communication piece getting it to the right resources that can get it like maybe having a key resource at each of these places where we know that the volunteers are available like our high schools or somebody to do outreach um you know being in the in the gym as a volunteer coordinator who's doing regular outreach of what volunteer and that communication of what volunteer things are regularly coming up that we need for and actually sending out sign up geniuses as I think like signing up geniuses is like genius because it just puts it right there in front of you it's like hey we need five spots and somebody is like you know gives an opportunity for somebody to sign up right then and there and be like okay I'll come this day I know I'm free um so that's something that comes to mind um so going back to the question about how to get the short term volunteers I think that one thing that um has been done at our school uh my kids go to the north star um was having uh uh assessment on what your areas are your areas of interest your areas of skill areas so basically we can send a survey out to volunteers and see like hey what is your interest or what are you good at right so if you're you're interested in greeting people or if you're interested in working behind the scenes not necessarily with people in terms of planning or whatever it is like trying to like just see what people's strengths are and working with those strengths and I like the idea about getting the youth involved um one idea that popped into my head while you were talking Sima is that um you know giving you the youth or the teens that are stepping up the responsibility and that chance to lead and grow in a leadership role so even if they're let's not say like completely running a group in a volunteer group in a for one specific functional area they can be working with another within adult who kind of is like a more of a mentor like working with them guiding them but giving them that opportunity is great for them and it's great for us and um I think that that's that's a great idea so um my daughter Robya who's here I don't want to put her on the spot but um she's actually created something like this at her school so she noticed a problem at her school that service hours needed to be done but the kids were not doing them so she created a club called Junior Civitans that actually proactively create service opportunities for her school um so you know that is one way like just as sister Edlin just mentioned this is how we're getting our youth leaders involved um you know finding more leaders like this that are willing to get their community and their teens involved and like you know she did a great job serving the school she asked them what type of things they'd be interested in and they did do several projects at MCC last year so things like that um you know getting our youth more involved like Edlin said and you know building those opportunities for them to be the leaders that's I think where we're going to get our bulk of youth and then also having the that network of you know um I know like everyone here such as Shazia and I don't know the brothers that well but we're all well connected all of us and that's one way to get is just through your network so I think that if we want this place to be run like a fine oiled machine it's it's going to need volunteers right um we as Muslims we're responsible for our our brother a neighbor and you know what I'm going to say may not be received well but you know I'll say it anyways like how about you know if you're you're a member of this community why not have you give up give up some of your your time to the community and and mandate that you give some hours to the community you know you're you're a paying member of the community if you want to to remain as a member you know think of what you want for this community what the programs that you want the for the for the center to run smoothly it needs volunteers people people here that you see doing the volunteer they're not paid there there are certain paid positions but most of the work that you see that's being done is through volunteers I mean we are running for the board the current board they're not paid right they're doing it out of the the generosity of of a thought process that but you know if I give up my time the community and my children are going to have a place that's going to benefit them right so if you are a member of this community then I think that it should be mandated that you give up at least some of your time to help the community run well I think a lot of good ideas have been already mentioned being on the board some of the folks already know that you know you have gone through eat prayers where you have two people show up and and now you're trying to set up for you know a few thousand people are going to pray there and everybody who shows up expects everything to be ready and you know if something is not done people are not happy even though you know even in the last prayers we basically had our board members and and even when we collaborated with service they had like two people so it's it is difficult for everybody it's not just us but I think you know some of the ideas mentioned that we need to target all age levels you know like teenagers or high schoolers college kids adults you know seniors because you know not having people show up at all and then expecting everything to be ready is really maybe I think we need to make the community aware of that the need for those and I think some of the ideas mentioned that we need to have that show it to the community that we really need people from all areas to start and helping out not assume that somehow it's going to get done and there are some you know I don't know it's probably in the single digits in the community who actually volunteer so it's it's a serious issue for everybody but I think yeah definitely needs you know working on it at all levels all age groups so I think whatever sometimes people think that it's kids we should just volunteer and you know the rest of the folks can just you know not do much so so mine is if we have a certain area we know where we need a volunteer have some youth director and try to help them and set up like you said genius one sign up genius and set that up for them so they can run so we can have more volunteer normally we see the same volunteer over and over and they get overwhelmed so it's better to have new people coming up and showing their faces like helping out with the things we don't put all the burden of brother money or the other board members so if we get a teenager helping out that would be better then thank you thank you so much so we'll go ahead and close off inshallah if there's any more questions yes please yeah inshallah I will sign up for the winter for sure uh marshala you guys have shared your thoughts and vision for what you want to do and what you want to see at mcc and it's very impressive and I'm very happy to hear everything um and that's a very extensive list that you guys have and marshala all of you are working or volunteering at multiple places my question to you is how are you going to manage time and how much time do you think you will need to spend at mcc to see the fruits of your ideas start just be fair uh I think being on the board there's you know there's certain you know we have uh biweekly meetings and that is generally you know an hour or hour and a half so that you know as as being on the board you just sort of start allocating that time that you have to be there to you know to participate in everything and sister humera does really well in terms of communicating about the meeting um in terms of um you know there's uh I think the only way to look at volunteering is unless you have you feel that there's uh there is your center needs a certain hours from you to be able to function properly so you know let's say you know if we work 40 hours a week we can say can you spend two hours a week or one hour that you can dedicate that you can do something for the center and start making that a habit that it actually happens that you will do something or offer your services to do something so and then build on it I know and I am guilty of that that for the last year I don't think I showed up for the board meetings because of the personal issues and stuff but my my question is when you have this plan when you have this vision what do you think it's going to take to make that successful right obviously just one hour of board meeting is not going to make it successful there's a lot of work and a lot of planning that needs to happen outside the board meetings and how are you guys going to do what it what where it's going to take what are your thoughts around that how are you going to make sure that your ideas are actually being implemented and are successful I think the at least you know we all had you know a few things as part of our vision but we can maybe you know as part of the board we can pick and choose the areas that we want to focus on and try to develop that one program and then go from there as far as how much you know because some of some of the ideas were common in terms of what we were trying to do but if there's something particular that somebody has that skill set like developing a whole volunteer network somebody can take that and be the lead for it and let's say if you want to build let's say an employment you know assistance office something like that somebody can take the lead and say okay I'm going to start gathering people for it so divide up the task and see if you can move so you know my children are grown up now well I shouldn't say grow up well I have one that's in the workforce I have another that's in off to college and I have a you know 15 year old that's still at home so I have time to dedicate to being a board member and getting some of what I talked about off the ground like for example you know creating that database for a list of mentors for the for the youth I was thinking that you we could get somebody who's in high school who needs like a project to work on that can work on something like this some tech project and put it on their resume and it would look like stellar like you know I I reached out to my community I set up this database I I did all this and and and it's fodder for for your resume you know your LinkedIn profile you can say that I did something like this so seeking out somebody who's young and motivated who would like to do this thing to get their you know career going in the right right direction would be one way to to do some of the things that I have in mind I'll pass it on so I've actually thought about this so I'm not sure if I'm gonna have a good answer here but you know I feel like a brother what brother the first brother Amir um what he said about you know having functional or areas where we're kind of focused on individually taking those on as responsibilities I think that's ideally what would help to ensure that things get done and sometimes we may not like one area might be requiring a lot of work and effort and I think just making sure that if one person is in charge they do what they need to do so if they need to get some volunteers or they need to make sure that there's help and things are done at a certain time then it's their responsibility however they can you know get help from fellow board members or the community um one other thing that you know the reason I was talking about roles and responsibilities and understanding what my roles and responsibilities as a board member would be was because I want to make sure that I am fulfilling my you know rights and what's expected of my my rights I'm not sorry I'm sorry not my rights but my responsibilities what my responsibilities are so that I'm fulfilling them and not you know um failing the community and you know what today one of my kids when I told them I'm nominated for uh the position they asked me well I thought that you stopped being a Convert Care Coordinator because it was too much so why are you possibly doing this and that's a very good question and I think that you know again like so people don't get over burdened I think it's important that we do divide up this work and make sure that the board members are not here just to say like yes we should do this or no we shouldn't do this but make sure that we're actually part of the execution process and that we're following through on things and one more thing I wanted to say quickly is that I think that it would be great if board members and board of trustee members showed up at the prayers regularly once a week or once every month or something so that the community can talk to them and have a chance to speak to them that's it thank you so much I think the brother asked a very important question you know when you're signing up to to give your time you have to have that time for me personally I just quit a full-time job I wanted to be more present at home and also to have more opportunities like these to give back to the community and I think I personally feel better about being more of community servant and public servant than to just you know work and always be busy and occupied so you know in terms of my time I believe I have the time to serve in terms of how do we make the board get things done and I think similar to what they said is dividing and conquering forming committees of the key areas that need the most work and in the board and then I think another point is not just dividing them but then we have to have some kind of check-in like if we're not like checking in we're not doing the homework like weekly or monthly or bi-weekly monthly and not checking in about that then there's a problem so one of the boards I'm on we do like a 15 minute stand-up on Wednesdays so that really helps because we make sure we set a timer we don't go over 15 minutes but the board is letting the board know what they did that week and what they plan to do and then we go through and we if there's things we need to add if there's things we need to do we have that communication within the board that hey this is what we have to work on for the rest of this week and we communicate again on the next week so I think is that key piece is the communication and also the check-ins whether we keep them weekly you know bi-weekly monthly whatever it is whatever works for the board I think that's the key piece for me so as you know I have three kids two are off to college so I'm free so whenever they need help I'm available so I don't have a time limit so whenever you need help I'm there I love us y'all so yeah you're right it is community work is rolling up your sleeves and just doing the work in shop and you know one of the things that we have to keep in mind here that it's just not the Pleasanton or the Tri Valley or the East Bay or even the Bay Area that we're looking at because of our reach nationally there are organizations there that are looking at us that have brought up the ethos of what a measure should be in addition to a lot of people that are spiritually unmasked and they follow our community online virtually and they feel they're a part of us so it's not just the local community that we can keep in mind it's we have a reach that extends farther than probably you know so maybe ending on this note as we kind of wrap up here that we can talk about a lot of the weaknesses and things we need to work on but let's talk about one of the successes of this community and then how we're going to amplify that and that can kind of be our closing remark as we close off this event I'll put past the mic on. I think one of the successes that I see at MCC is that it's a very welcoming community a well-run community it's a community that makes you want to come back they hold you know programming that you know is programming that you want to see program that you want to bring your family to so I really appreciate the work that MCC does with bringing different speakers bringing different you know opportunities different opportunities for you know different scholars you know it's just a blessing to be a part of a community that makes you want to feel welcome and make you want to come back so that's definitely one of the successes that I see I know people that are out of state that tune into MCC I know people that are out of country that tune into MCC so that is to me is like really a success of MCC is that they have this reach where I can see that growing that is forming those bonds beyond our city beyond our our community and reaching out to like you know different states different massages that are super active you know having that reach within the different communities will make MCC even more powerful and bring even more reach to you know the community and and and beyond again I want to thank everybody for being part of this and giving me this opportunity to speak for me I think that MCC has grown so much in the last decade and mashallah there's a lot that we can we've been doing and when I say MCC I want to say one thing that you know we talk about MCC does this MCC does that but the faces that MCC you know when we talk about MCC doing things and executing programs it really is people like brother manir brother marie's sister amana you know sister arjman the employees and the volunteers and that's why I really wanted to talk about like you know accountability and transparency and things like that because we really want to make sure that the people who are doing the work are feeling valued and are appreciated so we can not just grow we want to maintain what we have here and make sure that we are keeping our strong resources and then to grow we bring in our strong other strong resources mashallah the community has a plethora of skills within the community so drawing on those skills telling people we need them we want them we we have opportunities for them to bring their strengths to the community and to serve and just making people feel more welcome like sister seema said you know continuing to be this welcoming community and spread the love and show people that you know we we are here for them and we want to serve them and support the community inshallah so yeah I'd like to thank the community for giving me an opportunity to run and being nominated one of the things that I like about the center is how strong the board of trustees is with the leadership that they've shown we have this center mashallah where we have five time daily prayers we have this beautiful conference room right where we have many diverse array of guest speakers to fulfill the needs of the community and as a former board member one of the things that I'm most proud of is bringing on a full-time facilities manager and manager in general like munir to run the place who has done a stand-up bang-up job in making sure that you know things are running smoothly he's brought on other you know full-time volunteers that are you know for example sister aminah who who's doing more than just you know accounting work she's reaching out to local governments and and asking for funds to run some of the programs that you see that are alive here in the community so those are the the things that I'm proud of and of this community and hopefully you know we can see more and more growth in those areas to serve the needs of the community I think when we talk to other massages you always hear how well they think MCC is being run and how many programs it offers and how good our Sunday school is so it's not just that you know we feel that we are doing a great job but you hear from other people it has grown into becoming you know sort of the center for this whole tri valley area and even you know people come from you know far away to attend programs here so it is a very you know it's a it's a big success story the way this center has grown and you know potential to grow even further and everyone so so what I seen MCC from when we came here 22 years ago and I would say alhamdulillah for everything that MCC does that we have so many lists of successful things that if I start listing up we won't have a time to finish up so I would just say alhamdulillah for everything that MCC is doing like sister Amna, brother Meir, brother Mirvaz, sister Urjuman and all the volunteers they've been doing all the hard work I would like thanks them everyone thank you so the conversation continues inshallah so those that will be receiving the ballot in about 20 minutes your inbox will have that ballot inshallah and you can refer to this video inshallah and go back to it and then we do keep in mind that we need you do need you to send your ballot in or vote by 5 p.m on October 15 inshallah thank you for everybody attending thank you for everybody who's tuned in and thank you of course are the candidates inshallah salam alaikum