Sabath Shazia-community Award Winner

A perfect daughter, sister, student, and individual within the community. A young women with exceptional talent, who is so hardworking, who is ambitious to make a change, and best of all she has a heart of gold. Sabath is a 21 one year old young lady who has been a part of doing charity work and voluntary work since 2007. Despite being a full time student, working two jobs, running her own two businesses she still has time to help the community out there and spare up to 20 hours a week on trying to make a change.


In 2007 she organised her first ever event at Luton sixth form college, where she raised £2,000 for the Bangladesh cyclone. This was done by organising bucket collections, henna painting, face painting, ps3 competition, raffles, donought eating competition and many more activities were organised to raise the large sum of money. In 2008 she organised another event at Luton sixth form college to raise money special needs children school called ' Lady Zia wernher', where she raised £3,000 to go towards to buy a new minibus for the school, again this was accredited and also stated in media. As years went on her passion for charity and community work grew and work is well recognised by youngsters - they consider her as a brilliant role model! For this reason she got nominated for ‘YOPEY awards’ by her college teachers and won first prize. She also received ‘Diana awards’ in 2008.

At the beginning of 2010 Sabath got involved in a new Luton project called the 'LBBC' (Luton bury park and business corporation). This is a project which is based on to get all businesses within LutonBedfordshire under one roof and have their voice heard. Sabath's role is as a 'vice secretary'. For a couple of months she went around each business within Luton to get forms filled out. This took up to more than 15hours of her time per week to get everything together. She attended regular meetings and had a big say as a young person within this project.

In February 2010, Sabath got involved in a new project called ' Hear my voice' as a key volunteer and team leader. The project which she led was to organise charity dinner and raise money for Haiti. She organised this in March 2010 with the help from other volunteers. More than £30,000 was raised for Haiti, buy just selling tickets, auctioning items, pledges and individual donations on the night. The charity dinner was held at Chiltern hotel, key guest speakers like Kelvin Hopkin, Joe hall, Nigel Huddleston and many more attended on the night, entertainment was also organised.

In March 2010, Sabath become a committee member for 'Aspire' Eid festival where she was put in charge of being 'Head of stalls'. Within her role she had to be in charge of all stalls being booked, keeping track of stall payments, liaising with stall holders for the Eid festival and much more. Again more than 2hours a week of her time was consumed.

In May 2010, Sabath helped with an event which is organised on a yearly basis called the, 'Luton Bazaar'. It’s a multi faith and multi cultural event which gets everyone under one roof and let them enjoy the day. Sabath helped with getting all the food to sell for charity, organising volunteers to come and help on the day, and organising activities for the people. Up to £6,000 was raised for charity. Her work was well accredited as she got interviewed for a website called ‘Sister Space’.

In July 2010, after taking her university exams, Sabath decided to get involved in a much more challenging activity to raise money for Haiti and Gaza. Yes, it was crazy and extraordinary; she decided to take part in climbing 'Mount Snowdon' in Wales. Mount Snowdon is the second largest mountain within the UK, and lies at an altitude of 1,085 metres (3,560 ft) above sea level. She raised more than a £1,000 for Haiti and Gaza, and managed to climb, reach the top and complete the summit. She was tired, shattered, out of breath but did not give up, it took her 7 and a half hours to climb the mountain and 4 hours to walk back down. Despite leaving Luton at 7am in the morning and returning the next morning at 3am she still managed to get up at 10am to help out at an another event the next day.

After this success she got involved in another project which was newly formed when the Pakistan floods occurred. The new project is called 'United Luton', she was asked to organise a charity dinner event, and be an events manager. At first she found it difficult to cope as there was so much to do within little time as also her target was to raise at least £80,000. With a help of 3 others the event got put together, it was held at venue central, up to 400 guests came, and two key cricketers attended on the night which helped Sabath to raise extra money. With Shahid Afridi, and Abdul Razzaq's attendance she managed to raise just over £100,000 for the Pakistan floods with others in the United Luton team. Again with little time, she committed over 15 hours a week to put the event together, buy selling tickets, organising food, putting all documents together, attending meetings, arranging volunteers to help, setting up for the dinner and much more.

Moreover, she works two jobs, runs two businesses a clothes shop and is a henna artist. Furthermore she studies accounting at university of Bedfordshire, she is part of accounting society as the vice chair, and has her name down for taking lead for many other projects within Luton. She is currently working on a 'charity week' project to raise money for orphans. She is in the process of organising an event next week sometime to raise money for the orphans and her target is to raise £3,000. Not only this, she runs her own youth show every Tuesday from 6pm till 7pm on inspire FM, and is going to start new innovative projects for the young community to get involved in.

Despite all this hard work and effort, she suffers from crohns disease. She got diagnosed with this lifetime illness in the year 2006. Crohns disease also known as inflammatory bowel disease, regional enteritis, and Granulomatous ileocolitis disease is an inflammatory disease of the intestines that may affect any part of the gastrointestinal tract from mouth to anus, causing a wide variety of symptoms. It primarily causes abdominal pain, diarrhoea (which may be bloody if inflammation is at its worst), vomiting, or weight loss, but may also cause complications outside of the gastrointestinal tract such as skin rashes, arthritis, and inflammation of the eye, tiredness, and lack of concentration. Whilst going through so much hardship with the illness, attending regular hospital doctors / dietian appointment, and having regular blood tests, she does not give up with her charity work, voluntary work and trying to make a change within the community. She feels “giving up in life makes a person weak, I am not weak I am a strong individual I will never give up helping others and the poor out there.” With her parents and family support Sabath has come a long way.

Youngsters find her a strong role model and inspiring. One young man named Usman Ali had said “Sabath is the most inspiring person I have met in my life, because she does so much for the poor and others it makes my head bow down in shame but it motivates me to stand up and also help'.

Overall she is a very hardworking girl, and deserves to be more recognised in the community. Youngsters need to see her hard work and get motivated.

Sisters' Space would like to congratulate Sabath shazia for the award and her hard work for the community, may Allah reward her abundantly. She made all of us proud and we wish to see many like her in the future.