DAY 2 – Rehab Mafraq

We have started receiving pictures from the medical mission now underway in Jordan. The group has seen over 1300 patients in the first 2 days and the link below is for the photo album on our Facebook page. A more condensed gallery is also posted below if you do not have Facebook access.

Please help us to continue helping the refugees in the region. They are not receiving many of the services they initially were able to get because of drained resources in Jordan, an overwhelming and unrelenting need, and lack of funds. We do what we can to provide some medical care, food baskets, and mental health care. Please click on the donate now button and help the refugees. Thank you Samia El-Moslimany for sharing your photos with us!

Facebook Album for Day 2 – Click Here

 

We would like to thank everyone who helped out with our clothing/soft goods drive last month. All the efforts and donations really paid off. We broke the record at Value Village for the amount of donations and received a check today for $2842.40! You donated over 14,000 pounds of clothing, bedding, accessories, towels, etc!

The money raised will be used for our upcoming medical mission to buy supplies, medications, baby formula, etc. Thank you all for your efforts, and keep going through your closets! We are going to have another drive next month. I know it is a high bar to surpass, but if we can get even close to what was brought in with the last clothing drive, it is a huge help!

Next Drive Ends April 15, 2015

If you want to be involved in the next drive, consider your children’s schools, your church or other civic group, or even just around your neighborhood. We have plastic bags and flyers we can send to you to hand out – if each child and their family in a class of 25 fills just 2 bags, at an average of $4 per bag, that is $200 we can use to buy 6 families food for a month, or 40 cans of baby formula. In exchange, you get to clean out the clutter from closets, drawers, bathrooms, garages, kitchens, and more!

Collect the bags, and bring them here to our office, or we can arrange a drop off time at the Value Village we are working with here in Seattle. We will close the drive on April 15th. Contact Brenda in the office or by email at brenda at salaamculturalmuseum.org for the details and to sign up to help.

If you live outside of the Seattle area, but would like to do a clothing drive in your area, contact Brenda and she can put you in touch with the coordinator at Value Village to find the closest one to you and set up the details for your drive.

Thank you again to everyone who donated, keep that spring cleaning going!

 

One of the things we do to help as many people as possible is coordinate with other organizations. In Jordan, we have a warehouse that keeps all the goods we send over by container – all of your donations of clothing, blankets, medical equipment, etc. What we don’t have is a large staff and fleet of trucks to deliver the donations where they are needed all the time. Some items, like the food packages, are distributed from the warehouse, but sometimes we need to get them to a different location to distribute. Some items we take with the mission teams and distribute them then, but that is only every couple of months, and our mission vans are pretty tightly packed with supplies and mission volunteers.

In order to get more of these donations out to the people in need, we work with other local organizations in Jordan who come and take the donations to a camp or village they work with and distribute the items there. We ensure the organization is legitimate and know where the items are going, so we know they are going to people in need. We have posted some photos before of two other organizations picking up a truckload of goods from the warehouse but didn’t really explain what was happening, other than the donations were being distributed.

The pictures in this post are of two Jordanian organization  – Umm Rassas and the Orthodox Church of Madaba – picking up a load of clothing and supplies and taking them to another town where they will be distributed to the local population of refugees. The refugees are Syrian, Palestinian, and Iraqi. Umm Rassas distributed the goods to 400 families and the church distributed to 100 families.

This particular load of donations came from the Maram Foundation of Houston, TX. They loaded a container and we split the shipping cost with them to send it to Jordan and are storing the items in our warehouse there until they are distributed.

Two of our past mission participants, Omar and Jasser Kassab from Switzerland, took some of the paintings done by children at the children’s  center while they were there, framed them, then auctioned them off in Switzerland. They created an NGO called Syrian Refugee Crisis to collect the funds. It was a huge success and they raised a large sum of money which they then donated to the Malki-SCM Children’s Center. Thank you Omar and Jasser!

 

This is a post from our November mission that for some reason is showing as not posted, so here it is again, just in case.
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Today we visited a new location in a village where refugees are living, and they have had no medical services until now. After our meeting this morning we set off in vans that were so full of people and supplies, they were all riding pretty low. After about an hour’s drive we arrived at the village and found the place where we were to set up. It was kind of a community center, with 3 storeys, meeting rooms, and rooms for parties or weddings. We unloaded the vans and set up the dental, pharmacy, and general doctors on one floor, and the OB-GYN, psych, and humanitarian teams on another. Only a few people were there when we first arrived, but it didn’t take long for the waiting area to fill up and the triage/intake tables were inundated with people needing medical attention. At the humanitarian section, it was the same. People who had nothing were desperate to get anything- hats, gloves, blankets, toiletries. The children were so eager to get even a small toy and some pencils. We had several older children who came up, and seemed to be trying to get additional items,  but then we were able to get them to help us get a little order and help the smaller children in line. By the time we were done giving out all of the supplies we were being entertained by a few of the cheekier boys with their “moon walk” and funny photo faces.

The experience of today has just reinforced how much need there is and how much the Syrians are doing without. There are no more luxury items to be had, even face cream for women is something they were asking us about, and unfortunately we didn’t have any with us. It seems like such a small thing, but imagine having nothing and depending on others even for the most basic things. A small tube of face moisturizer takes on a whole new dimension in this context. It would be nice to be able to offer the women this small thing in light of how big a burden they now shoulder. Many are widows, raising their children on their own, trying to provide for them. The traditional family support system for the Syrians has been completely ripped apart, and having things like face cream and hand cream won’t solve their problems, but for just a few minutes, it can make them feel better and keep the world and it’s bitter realities at bay.

SCM is having a clothing and soft goods drive to benefit SCM’s programs. We are partnering with another organization to turn your donated clothing (including accessories like handbags, duffel bags, scarves, ties, hats, mittens and gloves, etc) bedding, towels, curtains, tablecloths, shoes (all kinds), socks, etc, into cash that we can use to support our programs.

Please bring your items in plastic garbage bags to our office at 3806 Whitman Ave. N, Seattle, WA 98103 before February 26th. No moldy or mildewy items, please!

If you have a large amount of items, please call us (206-545-7307) before bringing them by the office so we can have the space ready and people to help unload your vehicle.

If you live in another city and would like to help, call us. We can have the organization we are working with contact you to organize your own local drive – it’s easy!

Thank you!