SCM is going to help refugees in Jordan get face masks to protect them from the coronavirus. In doing so, we will also be helping a women’s cooperative near Madaba of seamstresses made up of Syrian refugees and low income Jordanian women.

Jordan has done a great job of locking down the virus but until there is a vaccine in widespread global use, everyone will need to remain vigilant to keep the virus at bay. Refugees are especially vulnerable as they often live in situations with extended family and it is hard to social distance. Living conditions can make rigorous hygiene challenging. We have been sending and purchasing hygiene supplies but have not, so far, been distributing masks. With your help, we will begin distributing reusable, washable cloth masks in our regular distributions of other humanitarian supplies. For $5 we can provide a mask and help the refugees stay safe from the coronavirus and help the seamstresses earn an income to help their families.

Donate here to send masks to refugees.

On another note, Eid al-Adha is coming in just a few days on July 31, 2020. It is the end of the Hajj and is a 4 day celebration. Because of the virus, families won’t be able to celebrate as they usually would, but we want to help the refugee families struggling financially to at least be able to give gifts to the children and have a nice meal. We are collecting new toys for 75 children, ages 1-13 years old, gender neutral. We are also collecting gift cards for local grocery stores so the families can purchase food for a holiday meal. Both items can be sent or dropped off at our office at 3806 Whitman Ave N, Seattle WA 98103. If you are coming by, please call Rita to make sure she is there to meet you.

You can also donate here and we will purchase the food gift cards.

Learn more about the Eid in this article from a UK news outlet.

Our reach is far and wide. We recently helped a Syrian-Palestinian family start a new business in Ecuador, where they had emigrated to because of the war. They had been working but recently lost their jobs due to the pandemic, so they decided to open an Arab restaurant. They are bringing Arab food and culture to their south-American community and we are proud we could help them get back on their feet with their new business.

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.

Through our partner on the Greek island of Samos we were able to distribute clothing, hygiene supplies, and rat poison to help control the rat problem in the camps to Syrian refugees there. The refugees have been living in very poor conditions and the camp has recently had a huge fire destroying much of the meager possessions and supplies they have. Thank you for your continued support – we were able to send $3000 to purchase all these items for several hundred refugees.

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