Invest in Muslim youth volunteering for peace

Dear Friends,

As I write this report, the ongoing conflict in Marawi City has been raging for 139 days and is now in its 5^th month. Our project work has been greatly affected and we have been concentrating our efforts on relief for the more than 500,000 displaced people. Our current volunteers have mainly suspended their usual activities to concentrate on the relief effort and they have all been deeply involved. KI has been just one of the many local civil society organizations collaborating with others to provide solutions to the crisis.

 Feeding Program

One of our partnerships was with Feed Philippines, a Christian organization based in Manila. KI teamed up with them to provide hot nutritious meals to the evacuees rather than the usual cans of sardines and packet noodles.Throughout July, our current batch of volunteers, Alumni volunteers and staff helped with the preparation, cooking and delivery of the meals to various evacuation centres. They provided around 1000 delicious hot dinner meals per day. In total more than 19,000 meals were provided.

Alumni volunteer and now staff member, Somaya gave her feelings “ The Feeding programme was one of the best humanitarian efforts that a volunteer like me could participate in, The role that I had was helping to cook and distribute the meals to the IDPs in the different evacuation centers, I also helped in crowd control. It was indeed a good opportunity for me to explore the ground of the IDPs around Lanao Del sur and Lanao Del Norte. Also it makes me sad to hear different stories from the IDPs”. (IDP is Internally Displaced Person)

Thank you to you all for your help in training and supporting our young people in this time of great.

We can only hope that the conflict will be brought to an end as soon as possible, so that we can go back to rebuilding our lives and rebuilding Marawi City.

Mariam