As the end of Ramadan approaches, SCM has been busy distributing food, supplies, clothing and toys to local refugee families and to those in Jordan and Lebanon. Thank you to all who have donated and to our teams in Lebanon and Jordan. Our teams organize and conduct the distributions so SCM can help as many people as possible. It’s not too late to donate for Ramada, so please visit our Donation page.

Here are just a few photos from the various distributions.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Ramadan begins next month on the 12th of April. Please join us in providing food to refugees here in the Seattle area as well as in Jordan and Lebanon. We will be distributing packages of food for families of 4-5 that will have basic necessities such as salt, sugar, beans, pasta, cooking oil, tinned meat, tea, and more, and will feed them for a month.

Ramadan Food Drive Goal: $10,000

We have already begun distributions of clothing for refugees living in Jordan and women from Daraa and also from Damascus came to our warehouse to pick out clothing for themselves. It was Mother’s Day in the Middle East so we had a special distribution for them. Thank you for your donations for our shipping containers as well as monetary donations that enabled this to happen. Don’t forget we have another container going out soon and you can check or previous post for the needed items for that container.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

SCM is committed to helping the people of Lebanon following the blast in Beirut in August 2020, and the continuing economic crisis the country is embroiled in. The tiny Mediterranean country is host to over a million Syrian refugees, thousands of Iraqi refugees, and nearly a half million Palestinian refugees, and has the highest per-capita ratio of refugees to citizens – a quarter of the people in Lebanon are refugees.

Lebanon has been suffering an economic collapse over the last year and a half, with its banking system being called a Ponzi scheme and collapsing, 45% of the population living in poverty, defaulting on international loans and a credit rating akin to Venezuela’s (very bad). Gulf countries have provided some aid but that is beginning to dry up. There are rolling blackouts or just no electricity at all, especially away from the urban center of Beirut.

To make matters worse, Lebanon could get some of its needed power supply from neighboring Syria but the US recently enacted the Caesar Act that sanctions any person, business, or country doing business with the Al-Assad regime, and Lebanon fears buying electricity would result in the US placing sanctions on Lebanon, something the ravaged country could hardly survive. So for now, in the middle of winter, people are living without electricity. This is particularly bad in the mountains and Bekka Valley. It’s cold and snowy, the nights are longer, and people can’t really do anything but hunker down and stay warm in their homes (which could be a tent, a temporary building, or a cold concrete brick structure!)

Another looming crisis for Lebanon is the fight over the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) program that provides food and other types of assistance to the Palestinian refugees. Israel and the UAE are working to get it shut down, and the program, which has been running in the red due to budget shortfalls and non-payment of countries like the US, is in dire financial stress.

While SCM is not a big organization, we are able to help 100’s of families with your support. We are providing LuminAID solar lanterns and phone chargers, food, and medicines but we need to get them more. The need is so great that anything we do is a drop in the bucket compared to what the people need. We provide food because the UN food programs have been cut way back. We provide blankets and solar lanterns because no one else is doing that in certain areas. We provide medications to help people who have seen the prescription drugs they need skyrocket in price or disappear off the pharmacy shelves all together.

Please make an end of the year, tax deductible donation to help us continue our work in Lebanon. Your donations go directly to help the people of Lebanon. https://www.scmmedicalmissions.org/donate/

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.

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.

Five years ago, SCM was one of the very first organizations to go to the Greek islands off the coast of Turkey to provide humanitarian and medical aid to the refugees who had made the perilous journey across the sea to get into the European Union. We were on the island of Lesbos, rescuing refugees as they got to the shores, giving them blankets and food, helping them get to safety and to medical facilities if they were in need of further treatment, providing translation services, and providing information to help the refugees take their next steps to asylum.

We followed the need to northern Greece as the refugees tried to continue their flight to countries that they believed would provide refuge  and asylum for them. We were instrumental in providing immediate emergency medical care to those at the northern Greek border as well as humanitarian supplies such as food and blankets.

We eventually partnered with another organization to provide these services at two large camps set up by the government in northern Greece. We also set up schools in each camp and had space in a large warehouse to collect donations and sort for distribution to the residents of the camps.

We’ve had a brief hiatus on our work in Greece as the crisis seemed to wind itself down and the refugees disbursed into the EU or found other places to live in Greece. The government was also becoming more adverse to outside organizations coming in and providing assistance to the refugees and made it very difficult for us to operate in any capacity there. We tried to set up a clinic and housing for women and children on the island of Samos as the need picked up again last summer, but our agents from the US and Jordan were blocked by the government at every turn.

In the midst of that stymied effort, we gained a local partner that has agreed to continue assisting us on the ground. This person is a Greek national so she does not face the same deterrents as foreign NGO workers face. She is carrying on our mission on Samos to provide humanitarian aid to the refugees there. These refugees have faced persecution as the anti-refugee sentiment has grown throughout Greece. The government is keeping the conditions at the makeshift camps squalid, overcrowded, unprotected and unsafe. They need our help more than ever now.

Please donate to this effort to keep provided much needed food, clothing, hygiene supplies, medicines, and more to the people who have given up everything to find safety and security.

 

 

The video below shows the unsanitary conditions have attracted rats. We are helping to get rid of them and some of the funds donated with go to that effort.