While You Were Fasting (Photos)

August 12, 2011

This week I tagged along with the wonderful people of “Smile in a Box” an initiative geared towards securing poor families with food items and hot meals during the month of Ramadan. I say this project is different because I think that not a lot of people in Jordan recognize just how bad things are for the poor here . Coupled with the fact that even the affluent part of society has been hit hard by the economic crisis and thus less people are donating money and time for such causes, I hope that this will help raise awareness and prompt you dear readers to perhaps help out with this cause or any other ones that you feel is well worth your money and time. This effort will never come close to solving the injustice our brothers and sisters face, but it will, at least for a few days, put a smile on their faces.

For many families, trash is a major source of income and food, people go through it mainly for bread, they then put it out in the sun so it dries and eat it with tea so it become softer

This is dinner . Long term impact on health is very destructive , as most of this bread comes straight from the trash cans.

Kids prepare to get their food packages and hot meals.

The east has a spirit that is seldom seen in West Amman.

Every woman and child in this picture is either an orphan or a widow.

One of the widows showed me this picture of her dead husband. He left four kids behind and because of our” laws”, his kids were not granted citizenship since he was Egyptian.

This hit me the hardest, one man, age 67, with 11 people to cater for including a mentally disabled girl. He gets around 60 jod from the ministry of Social development , ( $90) per month.

Raha f Mohammad

I think what you are doing is good, but is it enough to give them a box that only lasts for at most 10 days or should we have to look for something that make them better for a longer period of time. the point here is that what will happen to these families after they finish their boxes.
Are they going to go again to trash tans for dried polluted bread??????????
Qais saada

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”…. it’s a very nice thing what you are doing but I think you should help them to be more Self-reliance .
Nasser Kalaji

Dear Raha,

We are limited by the budget we have, if we do manage to raise more money then the food would last longer, but you have to start somewhere and this project is only in its third year and it is growing at a decent rate, I wish we could feed all Jordanians but we do what we can.
- Rahaf Mohammad
  
  the issue is not that the food should last longer, the thing i want to talk about is sustainability . and hope that these ideas will be launched soon…
  Rahaf…
  - Nasser Kalaji
    
    if you have any suggestions or ideas pls do share them with us.
Nasser Kalaji

Dear Qias,

I agree and we try to do so, teaching kids skills that we oursleves are good at, but its not part of this initiative and its no where enough. Also bro , today for example the food went to an orphange up in Irbid and we try to chose that as we say in Arabic la 7awla wala qouta lahoum. the sick, the widows , the orphans, thats what we target the most . but if we ever want to solve these problems long term we need a much more diverse effort inlcuding teaching people a trade, family planning, environmental issues and a whole lot of other things. that something I have been planning for a while and hope to launch soon.

Regards

Nasser
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