Al-Khair Foundation (AKF) began with a school. In the Islamic tradition, which advocates that charity starts at home, we wanted to give back to our UK community first. And education was the best thing we knew to give.

Today, Al-Khair Foundation (AKF) is a UK-based Muslim charity, and although we’ve been engaged in charitable work from the outset, education was initially our key priority. After our UK schools proved to be a success, AKF started building schools overseas. Our focus was educating orphans and children from underprivileged communities. This led to our work with widows and vulnerable women, and then to the establishment of the AKF shelters. Eventually we launched our water aid and livelihood projects, as well as the Al-Khair Foundation medical aid programmes. 2005 became a turning point for us, when AKF rose to the challenge of providing emergency aid during the Kashmir Earthquake of that year. This was our first venture into the area of Overseas Disaster Relief. That October, and in the winter months which followed, AKF distributed food, shelter kits and medicine to survivors of the quake. Since then, AKF has undertaken emergency aid missions all over the world. Our support of the Haiti earthquake survivors was recognised by the United Nations in 2010. While during the Japan earthquake of 2011, we were the only UK Muslim charity working with survivors on the ground.