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News Desk Supporters of Parsons Green based Al Muntada Trust raised £100,000 in four weeks to provide emergency medical and food aid to support displaced families in Somalia and Kenya.
The Al Muntada Trust is an independent charity set up originally in 1986 to support the local community in Parsons Green, in south west London. Over the past 25 years the Trust has developed to become an Africa charity specialist.
By working in partnership with 26 local NGOs in Sub-Saharan Africa Al Muntada funds and supported projects in 17 countries in the past twelve months.
“The projects focus on rebuilding sustainable communities,” says Sameh Ramadan, Managing Director of Al Muntada Trust in the UK.
“In Mogadishu for example we have opened a local office so we can focus on capacity building in Somalia. Local people need help to rebuild their lives in their own way. So for instance when the rains do eventually fall the water needs to be captured so that farmlands can be properly irrigated and the people can go back to working their land. But even before that water wells need to be sunk in the villages that the Somali land workers have currently deserted. The cost to sink just one of these wells can be as much as £80,000 because they have to be so deep, often over 50m, and blasted through rock.”
In the Internally Displaced Peoples (IDPs) camp just off Digfur Hospital in Mogadishu, 5,000 people exist in hopeless conditions. The talk is of lack of hygienic facilities and no privacy.
Scanning the camp (photo) to look for some kind of structure there is only a makeshift hole, open to the elements, covered with a piece of cardboard less than five metres from their huts.
The two cubicles in this camp are overflowing with waste. The refugees have resorted to scooping out the waste from the toilets and mounting it on the side, even though cooking and eating take place less than ten feet away. The flies are insufferable, the smell intolerable.
“Where is the world and why have they forgotten about us?” is the plea. Everyone has a heartbreaking story to tell; describing their treacherous journeys to the camps dodging militia or lions or hyenas.
All the while they are in grief for having to abandon their barren farmlands in the hope of food and water in Mogadishu, or worse, mourning the loss of loved ones who died en route too weak and ill to have sustained the journey by foot.
If you would like to learn more about Al Muntada’s work please call Sameh Ramadan, Managing Director, Al Muntada Al Islami Trust: 020 7736 9060 www.almuntadatrust.org
Or donate to:
Al Muntada Trust (Registered charity no. 293355)
National Westminster Bank
45 Fulham Broadway Branch
London SW6 1AG
Sort code 60-22-16 Account: 44348452
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