Ramadan Mubarak, SAMS Zakat

This is article is a greeting of respect for my Muslim colleagues and friends, and an invitation during the month of Ramadan for anyone to consider supporting the work of the Syrian American Medical Society as Zakat.

If you aren't familiar with Ramadan, it is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and is observed as a time of fasting to commemorate the first revelation of the Quran to Muhammad according to Islamic belief. This year it goes from May 26 to June 24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramadan

Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam, a form of charitable giving, based on income and the value of all of one's possessions; it is customarily 2.5% (or 1/40th) of a Muslim's total savings and wealth above a minimum amount known as nisab, Zakat literally means "that which purifies". See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zakat

I invite you to review the work of the Syrian American Medical Society, which has gone to great lengths to send people and supplies to provide dignified medical treatment to people in various areas of the Middle East and in Syria, especially those affected by current events in Syria, including refugees. www.sams-usa.net

I am also writing this article to celebrate the fact that I was able to obtain a Google grant for SAMS, which was approved just before the start of Ramadan. (A Google Ad grant is part of the Google for Non-profits program, which provides free ad budget to run ads on Google Adwords, up to $329/day, $10,000/month, $120,000/yr, $1.2 million per decade.) Part of my research as a professor is to help non-profits obtain, manage and optimize Google grants, and I'm particularly proud to be able to help SAMS in this way. I also want to take this opportunity to thank my friends and colleagues who work at Google - I am really impressed that Google continues to make this program available -- long may it last!

(I am willing to help any non-profit that qualifies for a Google Grant - feel free to get in touch if you like - I can also help improve the performance of an existing Google grant, or recover ones that have gone dormant. You are welcome to invite me to connect on LinkedIn)

I am honored to have chance to help SAMS, and I'm impressed with their work -- at the time of writing several people from SAMS in the U.S. are over in Turkey, in refugee camps, providing medical treatment. They are doing good work and I urge you to review their site, and consider supporting them, regardless of your background.