As most people were enjoying a lie in on New Year’s Day, members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Youth Association (AMYA) were working hard to clean up the streets of London.

Volunteers from AMYA picked up their brushes, brooms and bin bags and headed to town centres including Wimbledon, Morden and Kingston to help clean up the streets following a night of New Year’s festivities.

The south west London AMYA members woke at the crack of dawn to pray for a prosperous 2017 before hitting the streets as part of the nationwide movement ‘The Big Street Clean’, which aims to organise more than 5,000 cleaning sessions and plant more than 10,000 trees across the UK this year.

National representative of AMYA and British imam, Farhad Ahmad, said: “Littering costs the UK an estimated one billion pounds a year. While the Government and local authorities are doing a great deal to address this issue, we feel strongly that it is our religious and civic duty to also act. From a religious perspective, both cleanliness and looking after our local communities is an essential part of the Islamic faith.

“With this in mind, our members kicked off 2017 with a nationwide street cleaning day. We invited members from the local communities where our 114 branches are located.

“All who participated enjoyed both the strong community spirit behind the initiative and understood what can be achieved by good will and a united Britain.”

Commenting on the Wimbledon clean, youth leader for south west London, Aamar Hafeez, said: “Our members have enjoyed living in Wimbledon and the surrounding area for decades, and so any opportunity to help our local community is much welcome.

“Cleaning the streets of Wimbledon Village also presents us with an opportunity to become better Muslims, as cleanliness is an integral part of our faith.

“We are peace loving British Muslims, and will continue to do all we can to serve our local community as best we can and wherever there is a need.”

In 2016, members of AMYA raised almost £300,000 for British charities and fed more than 10,000 homeless people.

They also planted 10,000 trees, helped more than 10,000 people during flooding in the UK and other natural disasters around the world, and donated 430 units of blood.