“The lives of so many of Yemen’s innocent children hang by a thread,” said Halil Demir, Zakat Foundation executive director. “They need our urgent aid, especially from our American Muslim community.”
Zakat Foundation’s food basket distribution “covered more families than we anticipated” by our funding support costs, Jumaan said. She also tapped local donors in Aden for additional baskets, which typically contain more than 100 pounds of high nutrition, storable food staples, like rice, flour, oil (5 quarts), beans, tomato paste, sugar, juice, and dates.
YRRF staff closely qualifies families for the limited food baskets based on need and catastrophic illness.
Hussein Qasim has five daughters, Rasha, Shatha, Shomokh, Ashjan and Somod. Malnutrition has stunted Rasha’s growth. The eldest at 19, her legs and arms have shriveled. The Qasims rented a one-bedroom house for $25 a month after war displaced them from their Taiz home, but they struggle to pay it. The house is bare. The father sells ice cream to locals out of a thermos. His wife Hanan suffers debilitating back pain from a displaced vertebral disc but cannot afford care.
To the south, in Ibb, Amar’s father had to leave family and work to seek treatment for little Amar’s childhood leukemia in Sana’a, which has Yemen’s only cancer center. Amar’s doctors prescribed three weekly doses of chemotherapy after his diagnosis in October 2017. At first, father and son made the trek north every other day. They didn’t have money for housing in the capital.
