Build your future through skills and education

The NZF Empowerment Programme is an initiative by the National Zakat Foundation to empower vulnerable Muslims in the UK by providing financial support and partnering with specialised organisations to deliver skill development and job-readiness programmes to create sustainable financial improvements for recipients.

The transition aims to create a more impactful and sustainable service by collaborating with partners who specialise in skill development, ensuring better outcomes for recipients and accountability to donors.

The programme seeks to create long-term financial improvements for recipients, enable them to gain skills, become job-ready, and achieve sustainable employment. Break the cycle of poverty by addressing barriers to education and vocational training. Equip individuals to contribute meaningfully to society.

A skills gap analysis is conducted with community and industry stakeholders to identify areas where training is needed, ensuring the programmes are tailored to current demands.

The programme is open to individuals (eligible for zakat) with a focus on: those lacking skills, including NEETs (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), refugees, women facing unemployment barriers, and university graduates lacking resources to pursue professional qualifications.

The programme provides apprenticeship and trade skill opportunities to equip NEETs with marketable skills, helping them enter the workforce and achieve financial independence.

Specialised support to help refugees gain skills and qualifications, particularly those with professional expertise and qualifications from their home countries.

With 65% of unemployed Muslims being women, the programme identifies and addresses barriers to employment, offering tailored skills training to help them re-enter the workforce.

Participants must meet NZF zakat eligibility criteria and the basic entry requirements for the selected programme.

The NZF Zakat eligibility is determined by Islamic guidelines, which specify that Zakat must be distributed to specific groups in need. Individuals must meet the following criteria to qualify:

· Financial Hardship: Must have limited or no means of financial support.

· Debt: Individuals burdened with debts they cannot repay.

· Eligible Purposes: covering education costs or supporting economic empowerment.

NZF conducts thorough assessments to ensure applicants meet these requirements. The policies and processes have been reviewed and certified by independent scholars to ensure they are religiously sound. For more detailed information on the eligibility criteria, you can visit the NZF policies page: NZF Policies.

Partners are selected through a process of submitting a proposal meeting requirements of an identified skills gap, empowerment officer and senior management review and thorough governance checks. Partners must pass NZF’s due diligence processes, including charity/company checks, financial assessments, and risk evaluation.

Partners are responsible for delivering training, assessing and supporting participants, monitoring progress, and reporting outcomes as per NZF’s service level agreements. NZF funds are disbursed directly to approved partners for services rendered, streamlining financial processes and ensuring programme efficiency.

The programme includes a monitoring and reporting framework to assess its impact, tracking participant progress, during and after the programme, overall impact on financial stability and job readiness, feedback from recipients and partners to provide transparent outcomes to stakeholders.