The SCM team in Jordan did a distribution yesterday to refugees in and around Amman. We distributed food, quilts, clothing, baby formula and other much needed supplies. The quilts and clothing items were sent in a previous container from Seattle, and your monetary donations helped to purchase the food and baby formula. Thank you!

I don’t think any of us thought that we would still be in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic with July 4th right around the corner. When it started, when we first heard of it back in February and people were beginning to ask questions about how serious it would be, everyone thought it would only be a couple of months before we could get back to normal. But it keeps going on and it is getting worse and the virus is spreading into more areas of the refugee communities. And now citizens from the US being banned from travelling to Europe, and states are banning people from other states from coming to visit. The world is changing daily.

SCM is trying to keep up with the demands of the refugee communities that we support, but it is getting harder and harder on a daily basis. We have applied for funding and grants, but we have only gotten one so far from 4 Cultures, but still have not received the funds for 5K. We are relying completely on your support to keep going.

So far this month with your help we have been able to accomplish the following:

• Load a 40 ft shipping container and send it off to Jordan. It was completely packed full of supplies for the refugees there and it will take about 45 to 60 days to arrive at our warehouse in Madaba. Thanks also to the help of Jordan Hashemite Charities, the container will be allowed into Jordan at the Aqaba port when it arrives. We have been working with the Jordan Hashemite Charities for many years now and they know us and the work we do to help the refugees there.
• We joined forces with Dunya Productions here is Seattle to “host” a virtual play called “Stories from Palestinian”. We were able to raise $5,000 which was then wired into GAZA for medical and humanitarian assistance. We also have an ongoing food drive for Dunya to help feed Palestinian families in need.
• Through our many contacts we were able to get $4,000 into Aleppo for food assistance and then another $4,000 to the people in Idlib for food and medical assistance.
• For our two young men that are stuck in Serbia waiting for their paperwork to come through for Canada we were able to get them $2,000 for living expenses
• We helped two young refugee men here in Seattle that arrived less than a year ago to get driver licenses.
  A car was donated to SCM and given to a Syrian family here to help them with their transportation needs for work, shopping, doctors appointments, etc. They no longer need to rely on public transportation or ask others for a ride somewhere.
• We worked with a number of people to get food supplies to the needy families from farmers in eastern Washington. We got potatoes, onions and apples and these were given out to the Syrian, Afghani and Iraqi families in the Puget Sound area. I believe we had over 2500 pounds. We also got watermelons from JD Market and those were distributed to different families.
• We have helped one Syrian family that wants to grow their own vegetable garden. We were able to purchase $570 worth of veggie and herb plants for them to grown on a piece of land near a Mosque on the east side.

We want to thank all our supporters for helping make this a great month that we were able to help all these people. A total of $33,564.90 was spent by SCM for these projects including rent and utility assistance to the refugees here.

Thank you!

~Rita

We recently did a food distribution in Madaba, Jordan for 100 Iraqi refugees there. Thanks to your support we are able to provide this food assistance to Syrian, Iraqi, and Palestinian refugees in Jordan, as well as Jordanians in need.

SCM is committed to serving communities of color around the US. Be they Syrian, Iraqi, Afghani, or black, we believe that all people have the right to freedom and dignity, and we are doing our part to drive this change. With your help we have been doing pretty well as we work with Syrian refugees with tools and opportunities to build brighter futures, we seek the same for other marginalized communities. Thank you for all your help in getting this done, without you we would not be able to do anything.

Here is what we did in May with your help:

• Provide $20,450 in rent assistance for resettled refugees in Washington state
• Provide $3200 in utility bill assistance for resettled refugees in Washington state
• Paid $1200 in air ticket loans for some of the refugee families (they must sign a promissory note for the airline tickets in order to travel to the US from wherever they were awaiting their asylum approval)
• Sent $4000 to LGBTQ refugees in Serbia to help cover shelter, food, asylum application expenses
• $3000 has been sent to Samos in Greece to help the refugees there with food, hygiene supplies and pest control
• $2500 was sent Turkey for LGBTQ refugees living expenses
• $20,000 in food aid during the month of Ramadan to refugees in Jordan
• $10,000 to help with medicine and food inside Syria
• We also did a clothing drive and collected 10,000 pounds of clothing that Goodwill pays us $.20 per pound. This money was turned into rental assistance.
• We contacted farmers in eastern Washington, and they donated potatoes, onions, and apples to SCM. Over a two-day period, we were able to collect 1500 pounds for the Iraqi, Syrian, and Afghani refugees.

We want to thank you all for your generosity and assistance in May to help the refugees get by. This financial crisis for the refugees is not something that will be ending soon so we need to keep up our pace to continue helping them. With your assistance we will be able to do that.

We are getting more and more calls for help – one person gives our name to another person and that person passes it on to another person. We do check the validity of the requests, and the money is never given directly to the refugees but it is paid directly to the utility companies or to the landlords. We are also in contact with other organizations to make sure we are not double paying for anyone who might be getting some other kind of assistance that they also requested from us.

Looking forward, we are planning to send a container by the end of this month to Jordan. It will be filled with humanitarian goods and clothing we have been collecting since the beginning of this year. We have not been able to send it sooner because of the virus, so we will let everyone know when the container will be loaded and then we hope everyone will be able to come and help us load – wearing their mask and gloves and do the social distancing, of course!

So, thank you again everyone! We appreciate all your help and generosity. Stay healthy, wash your hands, wear a mask, and let’s keep on going and let’s make this a better world!

Thank you!

~Rita

Thanks to our donors we were able to distribute another 200 food parcels containing rice, pasta, sugar, salt, beans, tomato paste, cooking oil, canned meat, and more to families in need in Madaba, Jordan – both refugee families and local Jordanian families in need.

Our team received large donation to buy food for another 100 families! Food was ordered in bulk and delivered to our warehouse in Madaba for sorting and putting into parcels to easily hand out to the families receiving the food aid. The governor of the Kerak district came and picked up the food and helped us distribute it to the needy families in his region. We thank him for his support and work to identify the families in need, and we thank our donors for making this second distribution to hungry families in Jordan possible.

Enjoy our video and photo diary of the distribution: