by Mrs Roberts-Jones, Head of TEP

This term, the Year 10 TEP students were learning about Islamic practices. While reading the news one day, I saw an inspiring article on a Muslim man, Haroon Mota, who was running 260Kilometers in the month of Ramadan while fasting. It transpired that Haroon was completing this 2.6 challenge in order to raise money for the Penny Appeal, helping people facing crisis, war and displacement in places like Syria, Gaza & Yemen. He wasn’t able to drink or eat from Dawn (3am), until sunset (9pm), which meant not eating or drinking for 18 hours and then completing a 10k run everyday.

I thought it would be an amazing experience for the students to be able to talk to Haroon about his challenge and to learn in more detail about the month of Ramadan and what the pillar of Sawm means to him.

In this difficult time during the pandemic, Haroon was really concerned about overcrowded populations and inadequate health infrastructures that made the threat of COVID-19, tearing through refugee camps and poverty-stricken areas, potentially catastrophic to these already vulnerable people and he wanted to do something about it, so took on this challenge with the aim of raising money and awareness. 

Thankfully, Haroon was very happy to help and my group thought about what questions they would like to ask him. Alex. C kindly put a video together to send to Haroon. Below are the questions and the response from Haroon. 

Students' questions - click here

Haroon's responses - click here

The students have found the interactive video with Haroon to be inspiring and also a great benefit to their learning, finding out information about Sawm that you simply can’t gain from textbooks. 

The TEP students and I would like to thank Haroon for helping us understand his challenge and religious beliefs, and wish him the best of luck on his next challenge for this worthy cause.