Islamic Help staff are travelling from the UK to Jordan this weekend for the start of one of our mos...

Islamic Help staff are travelling from the UK to Jordan this weekend for the start of one of our most ambitious and exciting programmes - taking more than 650 Palestinian orphans from Jordan to Umrah.

Half a dozen UK staff will join Islamic Help’s Jordan team and volunteers for the start of the journey from the Jordanian capital, Amman, to Saudi Arabia on Monday 18th January.

More than 15 coaches will take the orphan boys and girls to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. They will be accompanied by their carers and in the case of mothers or adult female relatives accompanying an orphan girl, their mahram will be with them.

As well as specially produced ihrams (the white garments for Umrah and Hajj), the youngsters will be given commemorative baseball caps and T-shirts to mark the historic occasion. They will record details of their journeys and experiences in specially produced log books.

The scheduled itinerary includes arriving in Makkah Shareef on the 19th January where they prepare for Umrah by putting on their ihrams and making their intentions to fulfil Umrah. The youngsters will be performing Umrah for themselves and for family members.

They will then go to Haram Shareef and the Ka’aba to perform Tawaf and walk through Safa Marwa seven times. After a few days in Makkah shareef, they will then travel to the blessed city of Madinah where part of the trip will include praying in the Masjidun Nabi, the mosque of our blessed Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him).

The 2016 programme follows the successful launch of our Umrah for Orphans programme in 2015 when we took our first party of Palestinian orphans from Jordan to Makkah and Madinah. To get a feeling of the joy and emotion of that journey, you can read about it or watch the videos here.

We will be updating our website and social media with the orphans’ journey as part of the 2016 programme. You can follow their progress on our website or on our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

You can also follow the Umrah for Orphans 2016 journey on Takbeer TV (Sky 834 or online at http://takbeertv.com/livetv) every day at 4-5pm or 6-7pm.