Every child deserves a future, food, to smile and the opportunities that come with it, say local and foreign humanitarian workers who are trying to improve the lives of refugees across a number of countries.
The plight of refugees was highlighted when Jihan Kaisi, a humanitarian worker from Lebanon visited Newcastle recently as part of the African Muslim Agency’s (AMA) campaign to assist people who have fled their homes for different reasons. Local humanitarian worker, Fatima Seedat of the AMA, recounted her experience at a refugee camp in Beirut. “There was a mother there, who was breastfeeding her two- year-old child. The mother is unable to afford food to feed her toddler, so she is still breastfed and has never eaten solids. The mother herself had not eaten in days.There are children as young as five who sell packets on a daily basis just to make money for food. Most of them do not even have parents,” explained Seedat. The situation is heartbreaking and the AMA is appealing to anyone who can assist these refugees. The scale of global hunger is enormous and has only worsened with the Covid-19 pandemic. This Ramadaan the Africa Muslims Agency has expanded its feeding campaign to 14 countries around the globe.
Their #MoreThanAMeal campaign aims to highlight the enormous social impact of hunger, raising awareness around the idea that food creates access to a range of other critical human necessities, including education, health, dignity and protection from abuse and child labour. The campaign provides culturally appropriate meals starting in South Africa, expanding to neighbours in rural Malawi and Mozambique, Mali, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Lesotho in Africa to Burma, Palestine and the Syrian people in refugee camps in Lebanon, Gaza, Turkey, Syria,Yemen and the mountains of Afghanistan. With hundreds of villages across rural Africa and Afghanistan in desperate need of clean water, it is their commitment to provide the locals, in these villagers, access to clean drinkable water through the sponsorships of waterwells and boreholes. This is in addition to the empowerment, education, orphan and water programmes that the agency continues to run throughout the year. For more information on how you can make a difference, please contact the agency on any of these number: 011 834 8685/6/7
