Taking Charity Week Canada by Storm – Maria Ahmed
Maria is one of Charity Week Canada’s superstar founders and volunteers. She graduated with a Bachelor of Commerce from Queen’s University, one of the nation’s top business schools. Currently, she is pursuing a certification in TESOL/TEFL from the University of Toronto.
She worked at one of Canada’s largest companies, Roger’s Communications, before switching careers to teaching whenshe realized that is where her passion lies. She teaches Maths and English for grade 7’s and 8’s, and is currently on maternity leave with her beautiful 9-month-old daughter, Inaya.
Maria became one of the founding members of Charity Week Canada when she was inspired by Aisha Khaja’s vision of unifying Canadian universities to help children and orphans in need. Her formal training in the Commerce program made her the perfect fit for managing Charity Week Canada’s finances. The initial groundwork required significant time commitment from all the founding members and she would work on Charity Week Canada after she came home from work, which included regular weekend meetings with the executive team as well.
In addition, she laid the groundwork for the organization and procedural protocol of finance for Charity Week Canada including creating a sophisticated and professional system of data-responsive spreadsheets with individualized access to all participating universities. This streamlined their process nationally, put things in real time, and allowed for a transparent system. Maria truly believe formulas are a work of art. Maria has since worked tirelessly for the organisation, and helped manage the programme with energy, passion and motivation.
As the number of universities and participants grew, their roles expanded and they created teams. Maria is now the Finance Director with CW Canada and has two other outstanding individuals working on her team, Muzna Azam and Mubashir Parkhani. In this role, she has also had the opportunity to work with some Islamic Relief staff, including Zaid-al-Ranwi, as well as Ahtsham Yousaf and Sohaiib Zuberi.
Maria tells us:
“I love my position for two key reasons. First of all, I find great satisfaction in tirelessly working to improve efficiency while simultaneously looking for new ways to decrease expenses. I also love knowing that I’m putting to use knowledge from some of the best professors of this nation on how to maximize revenue to one the most noble causes in this world: to help orphans and needy children.”
