Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow expressed gratitude to the group of high school students who worked to install the “Ramadan Mubarak” sign in Nathan Phillips Square for the first time in the city’s history.
“About a year ago, these brilliant young people had an idea and then they came together. They said, how are we going to do this? We need to fundraise. We need to design. And that’s what they did single-handedly”, Chow told OMNI News Arabic.
“Over a whole year. They raised funds to put up the sign. And then, of course, they come to City Hall and said, can we do this? Absolutely!” Chow said, surrounded by the students in front of the sign on a rainy Ramadan day.
High school student Laila Soliman, who brought the idea to fruition alongside her peers, said she feels deeply moved when passersby stop to take photos with the sign.
“I’m so grateful every time I come here and I see people taking photos in front of it, I literally want to cry because I’m like, oh my God, people are actually taking photos in front of this sign and they’re happy and they’re excited.”
Soliman, who is also President of the Toronto Youth Muslim Council, stressed that she “does this so every Muslim can feel safe in the city they grew up in.”
At first, the students were questioning how they would be able to move forward with the project. Miraj Siddiqui, who is co-head of the Toronto Youth Muslim Council, said the group thought that the idea was “far-fetched” at the start.
“Where are we going to be able to find someone to make the sign? Is it going to be big enough? Is it going to get noticed? Will it get hate? So we had a lot of different questions and concerns, but Alhamdulillah, we were able to pull through”, Siddiqui added.
Ibrahim Rahman, Head of Communications at the Toronto Youth Muslim Council, said that the sign will help introduce Ramadan and Islam to those seeking answers and that it will help in correcting some misconceptions about Islam.
The sign cost nearly $28,000 and was funded entirely by donations from the Muslim community and its supporters. Soliman stressed that the city was not involved in the funding.
“A lot of people think that this city took on this initiative to fund this project. …They’re like, why is the city doing this? But they’re not doing it for other holidays. And I think the really important note to make is that this was 100 per cent youth led. We raised every single dollar for it through GoFundMe”, Soliman said.
The group was able to raise the money in just about a month, as Raheem Ebraheem, Head of Finance at the Toronto Youth Muslim Council told OMNI News, because “people were very generous”. He also said that people who did similar initiatives also contributed to the project.
Mayor Chow told OMNI News that the sign strengthens the city’s sense of unity.
“Our motto is diversity and strength. And we are stronger when we are together. We are stronger because we are diverse, and this sign contributes towards that strength”, Chow concluded.
