Salaam everyone, thank you for your support of the Center for Global Muslim Life / Beyond Borders Studios Digital Media Academy.

As salaam alaykum, 

I pray you all are well in these final days of Ramadan. 5 years ago 151 of you came together in supporting my first major media project, Ummah Wide. I wanted to write to thank you all, and to update you on what has happened since then. This Ramadan we launched the more mature, and more fully fleshed out version of Ummah Wide, as the non-profit 501c3, the Center for Global Muslim Life. The Center for Global Muslim Life is a media production hub, research center, and cultural incubator. 

Help us connect Muslim communities around the world with our nonprofit media production hub, research center, and cultural incubator

In 2018 Dustin Craun was living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and started reflecting with a group of interlocutors on how little we actually know about the diversity of Muslim life around the world. We know about our crises, the wars, and Islamophobia but what do we know about the leaders in our community building the collective future of the world’s largest and most diverse faith? What do we know about Muslims making a social and spiritual impact around our world? What do we know about diverse narratives about Muslims being produced around the world? The diverse startups growing around the world to serve Muslim communities?

So we asked the question 

What would it look like to create a center that is future-oriented, and that creates spaces for media, social impact, and cultural producers? What would it look like to create something visionary and move away from the constant reactionary thinking that our community has been stuck in for the last twenty years? This is what we have set out to build with the Center for Global Muslim Life, as a future-oriented media production hub, research center, and cultural incubator creating cutting edge conversations across diverse Muslim communities. The Center for Global Muslim Life builds connections between a diverse set of media producers, researchers, cultural strategists, artists, technologists, community organizers, and policymakers from throughout the United States and from around the world working on key issues in global Muslim communities.

Why should you consider supporting CGML?

Over the next 50 years, we will witness unprecedented changes:

🏙 More than 70% of humanity is expected to live in urban areas.​

🌏 Global power will continue to shift to Asia.​

💻 Technology will play an ever-increasing role in our daily lives.

🌳 Climate change will impact our world in ways that we cannot fully predict.

🕋 Global Muslim populations will grow from an expected population of 2 billion in 2020 to over 3 billion people by 2070, making Islam the largest religion in the world for the first time. This will rapidly change the landscape of religious communities.

📝 Hence, the importance of taking our narratives into our own hands, an objective CGML seeks to achieve.

MUSLIM WELLNESS & RAMADAN 

Part of the shocking nature of this moment for Muslims around the world is that we are locked in our homes in what is our most social month where we are at dinners, and the Mosque nearly every night of this month. As we build out rapid response research and programming in response to the COVID 19 pandemic we are looking at mutual aid programs being built at the Mosque level in the United States and around the world. We are also producing a set of content to connect our community in unique ways in this month.

CONNECTING THE DIASPORA OF HEARTS

In this time of the COVID-19 virus, it is more important than ever that Muslim communities are able to connect with each other around the world and learn best practices from each other in times of crisis. With this in mind, we are organizing a series of symposia with global Muslim institutions, thinkers, religious scholars, medical professionals, artists, and people making social impact around the world. The first symposium, "Connecting the Diaspora of Hearts - Building our Global Muslim Future" will take place as a 4 part event on May 16, 22, 30, and June 7th. 

UMMAH BUILDERS

At this time of great global crisis, we want to talk to the future builders about how to transform our world. Ummah Builders is beginning as a live show hosted by Dustin Craun, the founder of the Center for Global Muslim Life, featuring scholars, artists, entrepreneurs, and change-makers from around the world who are creating communities through social movements, companies, institutions, and art. Over the next year, we plan to turn this into a series of short films.

MUSLIM HEALERS & FRONTLINERS

In the United States alone there are more than 50,000 Muslim doctors, with hundreds of thousands of Muslim health professionals in Western countries. There is also a historical and emerging field of Muslim wellness that mixes traditional Islamic knowledge with Western and at times Chinese medicine. In this live series, we talk to Muslim health professionals and healers from around the world about the Muslim response to the COVID 19 pandemic, and how Prophetic healing is evolving in the twenty-first century.

Ummah Classics is a podcast featuring important lectures and interviews from throughout the world some historical, some more contemporary all with cutting edge ideas related to global Muslim life.

We have built a unique radio station with Ramadan programming (available on our homepage globalmuslimlife.com) from around the world so people can connect with content in a unique way this month. From lectures to classes and global Qur’an recitations this station is built to inspire in this time of great difficulty.

THE GLOBAL EID VIRTUAL FILM FESTIVAL

The Global Eid Virtual Film Festival is a celebration of Global Muslim Life during the month when we join together in worship, community, and celebration of faith and life. For most fo the world, this Ramadan will be unlike any other as we are in quarantine in our homes and unable to join together in our public acts of worship and celebration. The Global Eid Film Festival is built for the community to come together in a celebration of Muslim life, faith, art, and culture as a unique way for us to come together online through film. 

We Have Built Connections & Told Stories of Global Muslim Life Around the World, Starting in 2015 we launched Ummah Wide 

We told the stories of the founding of organizations like LaunchGood and NoorKids 

In 2016 we launched MPower Change with Linda Sarsour, Mark Crain, and our founding team. Building one of the largest Muslim social justice organizations in the US. 

In 2017 we launched our production studio, Beyond Borders Studios, where we have worked with clients startups, nonprofits, universities, and corporations of many different sizes including the University of California at Berkeley, The Othering and Belonging Institute, Port of Mokha Coffee, the California Endowment, 500 Startups, Faith in Action National Network, The University of Colorado at Boulder, and CAIR California.

As a filmmaker, I have produced 10 short films to date including, my most recent film "A Prayer Beyond Borders" about immigration at the US / Mexico Border and the response of the Muslim & Christian communities. 

Our Team 

We have built a global team of advisors for this project which to date includes Dr. Hatem Bazian, Aamer Rahman, Amna Mulla Afzal, Abbas Barzegar, Ashraf Gomma Ali, Qasim Arif, and Imam Mohamed Ahmed Khan. 

What a couple of weeks it has been for us as a company, in total we raised $16,100 dollars with all of your support on our Launch Good campaign. 

We were really amazed by all the love we got from so many people and all those $3 and $5, $25 and $50 dollars added up with all 152 of you who contributed to the campaign. It was beautiful to see all the artists, writers, scholars, entrepreneurs and everyone in between who pitched in, we could never thank you all enough! 

We will be sending out all the perks from the campaign hopefully by the end of next week. 

We will also be putting out the Malcolm X Digital Media Fellows Application, which we hope you all can share with your networks. 

Thank you, and May God reward and bless you all,

Dustin Craun,

Founder of Ummah Wide

Thank you for all your support can you share the campaign with your friends to help us reach our goal? We have $4000 dollars to go and we believe we can make it with your support! 

Can you tweet to support us? 

Final 2 days - Who can help us launch the Malcolm X Global Digital Media Fellows program - https://www.launchgood.com/project/ummah_wide

Can you send a text to 10 of your friends to show your support: 

Salaam (Insert name) Can you support Ummah Wide in launching the Malcolm X Digital Media fellowship program with their crowdfunding campaign. We have 2 days left to raise $4000 and we know we can do it if everyone pitches in any amount. If you want to change the story about Islam and Muslims this is your chance. Learn more about our campaign here: https://www.launchgood.com/project/ummah_wide

Can you send an email to 10 friends & post on Facebook about why you supported Ummah Wide? 

We have found a lot of people really resonate with what we are going to be teaching in the program itself. Here's an example:

I supported Ummah Wide in building the Malcolm X Digital Media Fellows Program because I want to change the story about Islam and Muslims

We're down to the final 2 days of our LaunchGood campaign. We know we can make it with your support! Contribute here: https://www.launchgood.com/project/ummah_wide

With your support starting this May, we are going to launch our first‪#‎MalcolmX‬ Global Digital Media Fellows Cohort where we are going to work with 100 aspiring digital media storytellers to dive deep into storytelling and digital media techniques. We are going to livestream and record this nine-week class for our global class of fellows, that we believe will result in 300 plus articles and short video pieces from all over the world.