By Mohamad Akmal Hakim and Na Yiwen
GOMBAK 28 MAY 2021: Feeding The Needy (FTN) provides support to people with disabilities (PwDs) within Malaysian society primarily by feeding and helping them receive special treatment and supplies, a webinar was told recently.
Mr. Zarif Zahari of FTN, who provided important discussions on SDG2 (zero hunger) and disability inclusion during the webinar, detailed out how FTN addressed issues faced by the PwDs.
He stated that the main objective of FTN is to help those who are poor and homeless called rakan-rakan jalanan in terms of food. FTN does not only work individually, there are also corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes, distribution, volunteers’ call and public engagement to help those in need.
Zarif Zahari said: “We exist to cater for our street friends in Chow Kit especially to provide them with nutritions, meaning we give food and also other supplies. With FTN, we have several volunteers, but we do not have any kind of open end registration. Whoever wants to join us can just come, distribute and go home.”
FTN is a fully working NGO. It has no sort of income, where the money for the programme is 100 percent derived from fundraising from the public. It is the main source of income in feeding the needy. No operation cost has been taken and those costs will go back to the community.
Talking about persons with disabilities (PwDs), Zarif Zahari said, “There are 5 percent of them, usually during our normal distribution, there are 500 people maximum, so from 500 people, 5 percent is like 10-25 people roughly are PwDs.”
Zarif Zahari said, “They fall under a number of categories, for example hearing disability which cannot hear, blind, people with broken legs, and learning disability. Our main objective is to help by feeding them, hoping they can enjoy it, at least to ease them. There are also special treatments for them including skipping the queue, giving them escort, and might have special and extra supplies for them.”
FTN supplies street friends with medicines and other items in addition to food, Zarif added. And other NGOs have teamed up to provide more services to those in need.
Zarif Zahari also mentioned that FTN did not set limits on beneficiaries, including the disabled, who could enjoy the food they provided.
In addition, he said FTN regularly distributes to street friends on Thursdays at Chow Kit Road to avoid time conflicts with other groups’ activities.
Today, FTN is one of the largest organisations providing food to people.
Zarif Zahari encouraged students to explore FTN’s related activities and show viewers FTN’s social media account, “Feeding the Needy,” respectively on Facebook and Instagram.
He advised students to explore more knowledge outside the classroom and offer assistance to those in need.
The webinar was organised by IIUM students Nurul Huda and Ain Husna from Professional Speech Communication course (COMM 3090).***