MINNESOTA – The first day of the year was very special for members of the Islamic Society of Orange County’s mosque, gathering early Sunday for the first charity tournament to benefit the homeless.

“What a great way to spend the first day of the year,” Iqra Mukhlis, a Golden West College student, told The Orange County Register on Monday, January 2.

Mukhlis was volunteering with at least two dozen of the male members of her youth group during their first charity basketball tournament to benefit the homeless.

The women were getting hygiene kits ready and preparing for a bake sale, barbecue, henna art sessions and later, a pingpong game.

Aiming at raising more than $1,000, the proceeds would go to the homeless.

Mukhlis said she visited some of the homeless encampments by the Santa Ana riverbed a few days ago.

“They want just little things like toothpaste, gloves and things we take for granted – like hand sanitizer,” she said.

The effort is not the first for the mosque, which has picked up momentum over the past couple of years.

Over the past four years, the mosque’s food pantry, which partners with others in the area such as Second Harvest Food Bank and Community Action Partnership, has fed those in need.

Helping Needy

Volunteers also joined members of other worshiping houses to provide hot breakfast and other necessities to hundreds of homeless at the Santa Ana Civic Center.

“There is a tremendous need, right here, in our backyard,” mosque member Nayyer Alam of Westminster said.

“We got a chance a few weeks ago to visit the homeless encampments (by the river). The conditions there are tough. These people have nothing.”

The mosque plans to partner with the Islamic Circle of North America’s Anaheim clinic to hold medical clinics at the mosque once a month to help those without health insurance next January 28.

“All our programs are open to the entire community, not just to Muslims,” Alam said.

Waqas Anis, a member of the mosque’s youth group, said this event was teaching him and others they should be grateful for what they have.

“We have food, shelter, water,” the Orange Coast College student said. “I know homeless people in my own neighborhood in Garden Grove who’ve been that way for years.”

Tim Houchen, founder of Hope 4 Restoration, a nonprofit that helps the homeless, said nearly 35,000 households in the county are just one financial problem away from losing their homes.

“We live in a county where it’s easy to become homeless,” said Houchen, who was homeless for several years in Santa Ana.

“People are not paid the kind of wages it takes to even rent a single-bedroom apartment in Orange County.”