Project SHIFA
Schooling Humanity in First Aid
"life-saving skills should be a right, not a privilege"
Sessions delivered
Community members trained
Improvement in confidence
Project Overview
Project SHIFA — Schooling Humanity in First Aid is a community-led initiative working to make Basic Life Support (BLS), first aid and emergency-response education accessible to everyone.
Our philosophy is simple:
"life-saving skills should be a right, not a privilege"
We currently bring practical, high-quality and free BLS education directly into communities, with an initial focus on Muslim communities and mosques. Our wider ambition, however, extends beyond any single community. We want to build a society in which knowing how to respond to a medical emergency is normal, widely taught and accessible regardless of a person’s profession, income, background or circumstances.
Our long-term vision is for BLS education to become an established part of the national curriculum across the UK, with Project SHIFA at the heart of its implementation.
The Problem
115,000
cardiac arrests are reported in the UK each year
Source: XYZ
81%
of adults lack the knowledge and confidence to act if a baby was choking
Source: XYZ
95%
of people would not know how to save a life during a first aid emergency
Source: XYZ
Medical emergencies do not discriminate. Whether you are a retired person at home, a young person travelling to work or a child playing at school, it can happen to anyone, anytime and at any place. The person who needs your help could be a stranger, a friend or someone you love.
That’s why knowing how to respond should be a basic skill we all carry, just like knowing how to cook, clean or drive a car. In the UK, fewer than 1 in 10 people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest, but immediate CPR and defibrillation can more than double someone’s chance of survival.
However, access to practical BLS and first-aid education remains inconsistent. People working in healthcare, education and certain professions may receive regular training, while many members of the wider public may never have the opportunity to practise CPR or learn what to do when someone becomes unconscious, stops breathing or is choking.
Project SHIFA was initially developed after recognising this gap within our own communities. Many Muslim families we spoke to had never received practical BLS education despite emergencies occurring in homes, mosques and public spaces just as they do everywhere else.
There are three problems we therefore want to address:
Access
Access: people should not have to enter a particular profession or pay for private courses to learn fundamental life-saving skills.
Confidence
Confidence: knowing about CPR through virtual resources is different from having physically practised it and feeling confident enough to intervene during an emergency.
Sustainability
Sustainability: one-off training sessions have limited reach. Communities need repeatable systems through which knowledge can be refreshed, passed on and embedded locally.
Project SHIFA therefore aims not simply to teach courses, but to build community capacity for emergency preparedness.
Our Vision
"Our vision is to build a safer, more prepared and proactive society in which everyone has access to the knowledge, confidence and practical skills needed to respond to a medical emergency."
We envisage Project SHIFA developing through three levels:
1
Community
Initially, we bring BLS directly into communities.
2
Institutions
We then expand through schools, workplaces, councils, businesses and other organisations.
3
National change
Ultimately, we want to contribute towards BLS being routinely taught through the UK national curriculum, and for Project SHIFA to be one of the organisations capable of facilitating practical delivery of that education across schools.
Community → Institutions → National change
This means building the model now that could eventually operate at national scale.
What We Deliver
Our sessions combine Basic Life Support with education about common household medical emergencies.
Participants learn how to respond to an adult, child or infant who is:
01
unconscious but breathing
02
unconscious and not breathing
03
choking
Participants then receive practical CPR training and also learn how to recognise and respond appropriately to common emergencies including heart attacks, strokes, seizures, burns and significant bleeding.
Heart attacks
Strokes
Seizures
Burns
Significant bleeding
Sessions are designed to be practical, interactive and confidence-building, rather than lecture-based. Participants have opportunities to practise the actions they would actually need to perform during an emergency using appropriate training equipment.
Sustainability
Project SHIFA is designed to become progressively less dependent on individual grants.
Our sustainability model has four complementary components:
1
Income from private and organisational training
2
Continued grants, donations and sponsorship where appropriate
3
Long-term institutional partnerships
4
Development of local instructors who reduce the need for every session to be centrally delivered.
Funding received now therefore does more than finance individual training sessions. Investment in equipment, instructors, systems and resources creates reusable capacity that can benefit many subsequent groups.
Our aim is ultimately to create a network in which Project SHIFA provides the standards, resources, infrastructure and support while trained instructors deliver life-saving education within their own communities.
"life-saving skills should be a right, not a privilege"