By Maryam Spahic
GOMBAK, 7 June 2017: After almost 40 days of collecting donations across the International Islamic University Malaysia campus as well as online for Ramadan Aid 2.0, the Life Makers Society IIUM recently distributed around 200 food baskets to refugee families currently residing in Malaysia.
The distribution of food baskets took place after Friday prayer until just before taraweh.
The refugee families who were mainly from Syria, Somalia and Palestine came from areas such as Ampang and Gombak to the IIUM campus to collect their food baskets.
Each food basket consists of 5kg of rice, 3kg sugar and flour, 2kg oil, salt, canned tomato puree and beans, lentils, dates, spaggetti, 6 litres of milk and cordial juice.
“Our team, consisting of permanent Life Makers members as well as volunteers, have been working very hard to collect the donations. For the past months, we managed to collect RM26,000 from around campus, our two Charity Bazaars as well as online banking for outsiders,” said Mahsin Saifullah, the programme manager of Ramadan Aid 2.0.
The founder of Life Makers Malaysia, Fatma Al-Zahraa Sami, said that the first Ramadan Aid which was held last year, managed to collect around RM45,000 which was sent to an NGO based in Syria, One Solid Ummah, to help the orphans from Aleppo and other troubled cities during the month of Ramadan.
“It was such a humbling experience that we decided to continue the campaign again this year, but we decided to get in on the ground ourselves to reach out to the people in need who are closer to us here,” Fatma added.
Ramadan Aid 2.0 is still ongoing; donations are still being collected and a second batch of food baskets will be distributed to other families soon. Information and updates can be found on the Life Makers official Facebook page, Life Makers Malaysia and Instgram page, @lifemakersmalaysia.
Life Makers society IIUM is a registered NGO club of IIUM under the Student Affairs and Development Division (STADD), established in 2013.***
