Tahir Wyatt – The $10 Million Dollar Question

Tahir Wyatt
AI: Summary ©
The speaker discusses the importance of providing unlimited resources and support to sustain the current infrastructure in the Muslim community. They believe that a donation model is not sustainable and that the OCOF (opering and contributing to the community) model is a good one. They also mention that the donation and volunteerism model is not a sustainable one and that the donation and volunteerism model is not a sustainable one.
AI: Transcript ©
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All right, last question.

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This is something that I've started asking people.

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If you had $10 million and 100 employees...

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Man, that's a lot of math.

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Don't worry about the math.

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Okay, let's put it this way.

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Unlimited resources and unlimited support.

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What would you do for us then, whether

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in Philly, national level, whatever?

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What are you doing?

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If I was in control of wealth and

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the resources, I would create as many OCOF

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as possible to sustain the current infrastructure that

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we have in the Muslim community and to

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support its growth and specifically the educational institutions.

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I think many of our educational institutions are

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subpar because we're not competitive enough from a

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financial perspective.

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I have a young brother, Mashallah, I've known

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him since he was a kid, and he's

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a principal in Philadelphia School District.

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The principals, I'm saying the young ones, the

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ones that have only been a principal for

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one or two years, they're making $150,000

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a year plus benefits and they get off

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the whole summer and all the good stuff,

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all the perks that come with it, and

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the retirement pension and those types of things.

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A good Islamic school will come and offer

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the same person $80,000 and feel like

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they're doing a great job, like Mashallah, we're

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offering 80 grand, without the perks, without the

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pension, obviously not working for the city.

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And so, I think that if we had

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OCOF in place, that would support the educational

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institutions and the other infrastructure that we have

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in the community, that that would ensure some

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level of stability and continuity.

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I genuinely believe that the donation dependent model

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that we rely on right now, and the

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volunteerism, so everything is volunteer run, donation dependent,

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I do not think that that's a sustainable

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model.

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I do believe, alhamdulillah, that the Muslim community

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is very generous.

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And so, we will continue to have people

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who donate and who will support through their

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volunteerism, but it's not a sustainable model, is

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my point.

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And it's definitely not a model that you

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can expand your current infrastructure based on.

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