أَنَا وَكَافِلُ الْيَتِيمِ فِي الْجَنَّةِ هَكَذَا

" ‘I and the caretaker of the orphan will enter Paradise together like this,’ raising (by way of illustration) his forefinger and middle finger jointly, leaving no space in between." -The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him

Narrated in Saheeh al-Bukhaari

When the first discussions were taking place between the individuals who would form YECS's core team, it was easy to formulate a basic goal: to help Muslim orphans. But we struggled with how to do that in a way that fulfilled our vision. Existing government orphanages have little to no oversight, to the extent that some have become infamous for various degrees of child abuse. Most NGO's, particularly in the area, adopted a different approach: try to lower the cost and provide the most basic level of care so that the most number of orphans could be helped at the lowest cost.  In addition, essentially no organization that we found in the area was committed to ensuring that orphans had access to an Islamic education of any formal sort.

While these approaches had many merits, we felt there was something missing.

Simply put, our main question came down to this: how can we give orphans as fair a shot at success (in this life and the next) as other children from well to do backgrounds being raised by both parents?

In brief, the YECS philosophy is this: To provide for the orphan children entrusted to our care at the highest possible standard.

The keys to our implementation of this philosophy are these:

1) Beyond Room and Board

We built a new, state of the art campus to serve not just as a school and residence, but as a home for our children. A colorful playground, activity rooms, clean and well apportioned dormitories, a full time cook to provide fresh meals every day, and a beautiful location far from the crowds and pollution of the city, are just some of the details we've done our best to get just right. 

2) Integration, Not Isolation

Rather than isolating the orphaned children from greater society, we opened the Al-Falah School to admission to tuition paying students, with each grade a unique cohort. The orphaned students and those with parents become classmates and friends, eliminating the sorts of barriers and prejudices of "otherness" that classism and cultural moors might otherwise enforce upon both sets of kids.

3) First Class Education: Intellectual and Spiritual

We enlisted a presidential medal winning former college principal, a gold medal winning engineering professor at IIT-Hyderabad, a Mazahir al Uloom trained Mufti with over 20 years of experience as an educator, and several others to develop a unique and rigorous curriculum to serve both the Islamic and academic needs of the students, educating them about their Creator, their Prophet, and their Faith, while simultaneously preparing them to compete academically with the best students for the universities and vocations of their choice. It is no surprise that our admissions team is always overwhelmed and that many of our board members' own children have matriculated at Al-Falah School