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Zakat Foundation In Yemen

We have one top priority in Yemen: Preventing starvation. This starts with our Food Security Program. We support sesame farming and provide mating pairs of livestock to help facilitate economic independence for low-income Yemenis.

In the short term, Zakat Foundation works with local partners like Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation (YRRF) to provide emergency food aid to Yemen’s famished people. In particular, we use our annual Ramadan Iftar meals to feed thousands of malnourished and hungry families for all of Ramadan. We then hand-deliver to many hundreds of families in Yemen fresh, locally raised, Islamically slaughtered Udhiyah (Qurbani) sacrifice, each year.

In the long term, Zakat Foundation has partnered since 2017 with Mercy Corps to implement a successful food resilience program with Yemen’s sesame farmer. Each year this program has resulted in at least a 25% higher yield per hectare in Yemen’s staple food crop. The sesame project doesn’t just help farmers grow better and more of the crop. It gives them improved processing methods and ways to convert that sesame into other salable products. It also links them to valuable markets to sell it all in and supports the farmers in partnering with others to increase the value of their harvest. To augment the sesame cultivation, Zakat Foundation donors have purchased solar- and fuel-powered generators, which has doubled sesame cooking oil presser production from the producers we sponsor, increasing farmer and processor incomes and food availability for people.

Yemenis were among the earliest participants in our wealth-generating Livestock Animal Husbandry Program, where mating pairs of cattle are provided to farmers to raise herds, gain milk and meat, and create other marketable benefits. With 16 million Yemenis lacking access to safe water for basic hygiene and survival and contaminated water a leading health problem among children, Zakat Foundation experts have saved children, mothers, and communities by delivering pure, drinkable water.