Current Projects
2008 Ramadhan Iftaar Assistance Appeal:
My dear fellow Muslims, Salaam aleykum,
Once again, alhamd'Allah, for CAI it's 10th consecutive year, we begin the process of preparing for Iftaar rations to be distributed to the most poor and destitute amongst us in Africa (through Khatamun Nabi Charitable Institute), India and Afghanistan. This year is going to be a real challenge due to the steep rise in food cost all over the world. However, I am convinced that together, as a community of committed servants of Allah (swt) and for His pleasure, we will prevail and help those that need the most. These food grain packages are really the only safety net for the vast majority of people who will receive them.
For CAI to plan and effectively execute this project, we will need to go and lock in the price of the rations with wholesellers at today's dollars to avoid the inevitable spike in prices closer to Ramadhan; thus this real early appeal. Please help us lock in the cost so we can help the planned 5,000 families we will distribute amongst. CAI is requesting US $23 per average family of 5 for the whole month for India and US$28 for Afghanistan. The cost of food in Afghanistan is about 20% more expensive than India, hence the difference.
India packages will consist:
5 kg rice
5 kg wheat
3 kg of different pulses 1 kg each
1 kg beans
2 kg sugar
1 gallon cooking oil
1 kg ghee
1/4 kg tea
1/2 kg salt
1/2 kg dates
1 bottle of jam
1 bottle of sherbat
Afghanistan packages will consist:
20 kg atta flour
3 gallons cooking oil
3 kg beans
3 kg sugar
1/2 kg dates
I beg you to please commit now, please sponser as many families as you can. Insha'Allah, we will be able to raise the funds required this way. I will personally take part in the distribution in Kargil, Indian Kashmir and Sirsi in Uttar Pradesh (India), Herat and Mazaar Sharrif (Afghanistan).
Jazaak'Allah, may Allah (SWT) bless you and your families for your continued support to the programs that CAI undertakes and may He amply reward you here and the hereafter.
Appeal for marriage assistance for desparate parants in Afghanistan
My dear Ahlebeyti Muslims, Salaam aleykum.
I am certain you all know about the precarious situation in Afghanistan. Security, poverty and torture, all of them stacked against our community. Comfort Aid International is very involved with various aid programs, especially in the field of education; we are in the process of constructing 5 schools in the Northern neglected areas and perhaps a major school project for the refugees in Kabul, if the funding is met.
In the meantime, we have a growing problem of unmarried girls that require our immediate attention. I have copied an article from the BBC here for you to read and perhaps get a sense of what desperate measures people take out of desperation. I do not want any of our girls to be sold off in marriage for money or to even contemplate any haraam acts for money and food for their families. CAI will, insha'Allah, participate in mass marriage program for those girls that have qualified for assistance through the ulemaa committees in Mazar Shariff and Herat on August 18 and 21.
We have over 250 such candidates and 150 have already been sponsored, so we have a deficit of about 100 to go. At about $600 a girl, it becomes a tall order but not if we act collectively. I appeal to you all, please consider this investment very seriously and extend a helping hand if you can. Time is very short for me to arrange all that is required (remember, this is Afghanistan) so please pledge now; you can pay closer to the actual dates. However, I must know how many we can help on an urgent basis.
I am off to Kabul and Ghazni for the school projects next week, insha'Allah. Please pray that all goes off well and that we can begin the long process of rehabilitation of these people.
Jazak'Allah and may He bless you and your families for all your continued support.
Urgent food appeal for Myanmar and Afghanistan:
My fellow Ahlebeiti Muslims, Salaam aleykum.
I am afraid I have grim news to share with you and need your generous help once again. I read the following article and it almost burst my heart in sadness and frustration. Cut and paste on your browser and read for yourself.
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=78276
The situation in both Afghanistan and Burma (Myanmar) is very grim. You must have felt the pinch when you went shopping for rice, flour and oil recently, the prices have nearly doubled or more. We were getting sporadic news of hunger in Afghanistan but the reports are now widespread and alarming. We have had starving women and children flood the Hawzas in remote northern areas of Afghanistan scavenging for food grains and also of some starvation deaths of very young children.
We made contact with Aghaae Ibraheemi, one of the Vice Presidents of Afghanistan and he sounded subdued, acknowledging the dire situation. He has assured us of any and all possible help if we want to send in food grains. CAI is now appealing to its donors for urgent help; we have been ale to collect about US $14,000 in contribution for this particular food drive but we need much, much more. CAI will, insha'Allah, depending on funds pledged, arrange another truckload (or more) of food grains and cooking oil next week. I will, insha'Allah, be in the area early July and promise to send in a comprehensive update.
We also, after much difficulty, made contact with our small community of Muslims in Myanmar (Burma) which was devastated by the recent cyclone. CAI will pledge US $5,000 in emergency aid for food and shelter material via India, from where it is logistically possible to help.
So I turn to you, our kind and very generous donors to act in haste and help if you can. I acknowledge times might be hard for some of us, but we certainly can do something. Please forward this appeal to anybody you think can lend a helping hand, even if you cannot help for some reason. Please help CAI take care of these issues while we prepare the future of these people with education of their children and a more prosperous future, insha'Allah.
Jazaak'Allah.
Past Projects
Appeal for medical aid in Tanzania, Africa:
My fellow Ahlebeiti Muslims, Salaam aleykum.
CAI has been requested by IZAAS of Tanzania and has approved the treatment of attached three medical cases without which these poor people will surely die. Total cost for treatment is $7,500 out of which $2,500 has been donated. Please help us achieve our goal for the balance of $5,000 and give these children of Allah (SWT) a chance for "normal" life going forward. I would suggest a contribution from your Sadeqa funds.
If there is a surplus collection, CAI will credit Medical account and use towards current/future life saver cases. May Allah bless you for your kindness and continued support.
Jazaak'Allah.
Afghanistan Water Project:
My fellow Ahlebeiti Muslims, Salaam aleykum.
I climb up a steep hill on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan on a very chilly December morning, heavy puffs of steam from my mouth evidence of my exertion. When I finally reach the top and the ground levels off, I want to kick myself for not covering my increasingly expanding barren scalp, for it is now really cold and I am visibly shivering. Seeing my plight, Mohammed, my guide and translator in Afghanistan, offers me his warm scarf which I gratefully accept and cover my head. I really do not know what I would do without the scarf, for we stand in front of a massive slum village that houses about 75,000 Shia poor and destitute and the only source of heat this winter morning is a clear sun that clearly struggles to warm up the windy atoms of fine thin air on this large hill.
We are in an area called Chandawal, within the larger slum of Daste Barchi; Daste Barchi is a slum area that accommodates about one million Shias of Kabul. I have come to see the plight of our brethren in Afghanistan, which is a distressing, albeit interesting saga in itself, details of which can be read at www.comfortaid.org. My immediate concern is the plight of these 75,000 people who, I am told, have no source of water. All these people have to trek all the way down from where I have begun my trip to get free water and I see many burqa clad women and children with empty buckets descend down on Kabul proper for their allotment of the day’s water supply.
I will not equably describe the scene before me; it is unfair to do so in writing, and will not do justice to the despair I feel. Needless to say, my guts wrench at the scale of misery and poverty that I encounter. Row upon row of flimsy mud homes with absolutely no amenities; no water, no power, no heat, no sewer system and most humiliating, no private toilets. Imagine the feeling of that woman or the young girl who has to come out in the public clutching a can of water on her way to call of nature. I leave this to your imagination.
I meet Bibi Fatemah (yes, her real name), a six year old yateem, about to begin her trek down the hill accompanied by her two siblings. Bibi Fatemah does not remember her father (or his name); he was executed by the Taliban when she was two perhaps; she is not sure. Her mother died soon afterwards, heartbroken and weak from no food to feed her three children. The children moved from Bamiyan to Kabul after the death of the mother and live with an aunt who has five children of her own so their work is cut out for them; it is the survival of the fittest. Bibi Fatemah makes this trek three times a day together with her siblings and I can see she is already well mature for her age. Her cheeks are redder than any red I have seen on a cheek and one side of her face looks infected from the cut in the skin due to the biting cold winds that make my standing there trying to scribble whatever Mohammed is translating for me very uncomfortable indeed.
Bibi Fatemah almost laughs when I ask if she goes to school and her sisters join her and giggle at the idea; they make me feel dumb. I ask Bibi Fatemah what she wants most in life. ‘Running water’, all three respond immediately. ‘And toilets’ chips in one sister shyly. And what would Bibi Fatemah want to be when she grew up, I ask? Bibi Fatemah shuffles her feet, then frowns and looks confused. I ask Mohammed to ask her what she would want to be as a grown up if she went to school. After some contemplation, her brows clear and she has an answer. An engineer of course, she says; then she would make sure all of her neighborhood would get piped water from below and they would not have to trek down three times a day.
CAI is attempting to get piped water to the likes of Bibi Fatemah and it will cost us approximately US $50,000 for the generators, pipes and tanks that will supply the water to 75,000 people. There is plenty of drinkable water in and around Kabul; the problem is its distribution. We are already working with engineers to make this feat feasible and I need your help. Please consider helping these people, your own, who have been traumatized enough and fled to the outskirts of Kabul to escape their tormentors. I understand we cannot help the entire million plus people in Daste Barchi, but we certainly can help the 75,000 odd at Chandawal. We will also try and get them some toilets if we can raise enough funds so that our women and girls can get some privacy when nature calls.
Please consider lending a hand; if this message can get to about 500 houses and each contributes only $100, we will be there insha’Allah. I am off to Kargil, India and Kabul / Herat, Afghanistan beginning July 05 insha’Allah, and would ideally like to get this project off the ground then. Please distribute this message to many, many who may not receive it and perhaps be of assistance.
Finally, please pray for the safety of my imaan and the success of my ongoing projects for it is the material and spiritual assistance that I desperately desire.
Jazaak'Allah.
Iraq Medical Supply:
My fellow Ahlebeiti Muslims, Salaam aleykum.
Sayed K. Ali, MD, a fellow momeen from Austin, TX is serving with the US army in a remote place in Iraq. His job is to look after injured US army solders. However, he, along with fellow colleagues, is trying desperately to assist at a local clinic that helps take care of the local population. It is a hopeless situation with a lack of basic medical supplies. This is not sophisticated stuff; just regular over the counter and medical supplies that treat bomb blasts victims. Basic and simple necessities like anti-inflammatory, antibiotics, cough syrup and even bandages that are scarce in that part of the world. I do not have to draw the picture for you; your television sets and the Internet tell you the story of Iraqi Muslims every day.
Comfort Aid International, in league with its affiliate, Al Imaan Trust in India and World Ahlebeit Islamic League in London will coordinate the sending of needed supplies to Capt Sayed K. Ali, MD to his APO base in Iraq via (most probably) Mumbai, India. We will purchase the medication and courier it to Captain Ali, insha'Allah.
These are: Tylenol, Motrin, Aspirin, Band-Aids, Kerlexes, Antifungal cream, Pepto-Bismol, Meosporin, Visine, Benadryl.
In addition to these, the children are asking for notebooks, pencils, pens and crayons and we'll purchase these as well and include them with the shipment. CAI has committed supplies worth US$ 14,000 and I need to raise this amount, as soon as possible. Please, please, please help. Let us join hands and get this off the ground and help; this is just the opportunity Allah (SWT), in His infinite wisdom is giving us. I have set the ball rolling with getting all the logistics and coordination in place. Please give generously; either with check payments to CAI or through credit card from our secure website www.comfortaid.org.
May Allah (SWT) amply reward you and your families and gladden your eyes on that very sure day when we meet Him and His chosen ones (AS).
Jazaak'Allah.
Somalia Crisis:
My fellow Ahlebeiti (AS) Muslims, salaam alaikum.
You may be aware of the developing food crises in the Horn of Africa, especially southern Somalia. The land has dried up and animals dead. About two million people are affected. The situation will be in critical conditions shortly, especially if the rains, forecasted to be about 20% of normal, fail again. We need not wait for the situation to get out of hand, before the horrific images hit our televisions and we are then prodded to react. We can help right now.
Please. Let us do our part in lending a helping hand to these starving Muslims, especially for the hapless children. I am working with Oxfam America, who, like the Niger food crises last year, agreed to distribute our contributions of grain (corn) without any administrative deductions. 100% of our contributions were spent in purchasing and distributing the food. Oxfam is a very reputable and transparent charity, albeit one with administrative costs (waived for CAI).
I am setting a modest goal of $5,000; this cannot be too difficult to raise insha'Allah. If you have any sadka money, etc, please pledge. I will wire the funds Friday, March 17 but please pledge your amount and mail in the checks later.
I am sure our collective efforts will bear fruit, save a few lives perhaps and feed few hungry bodies. Insha'Allah.
Darfur Food Aid:
My dear Ahlebeiti Muslims, Salaam alaikum.
As you all are aware, there is an acute food crisis in the Darfur region of the Sudan and surrounding countries with millions displaced and hundreds dying of hunger every day. CAI has been trying to find ways to help and I have been in contact with IRS and Oxfam who are very active in the region. You may recall that CAI has worked with Oxfam in the past where we sent in $10,000 worth of direct food aid to Niger and Somalia when the organization guaranteed it will not deduct any administrative fees from our funds.
CAI has already pledged US $5,000 for the immediate distribution of food to these pitiful and miserable people who are Allah's creations and believe in His oneness and the prophet-hood of Mohamed (SAW).
I appeal for their aid in His and in the name of Ahle Beit (AS); I pray we can all make a very tiny difference to them and later send even more then the initial pledge. Your sadka and other kaffara funds are acceptable. Please help if you can.
May Allah (SWT) bless and reward you for your sacrifice as we seek His pleasure.
Jazaak'Allah.
Iraq Water Crisis:
My dear Ahlebeiti Muslims, Salaam alaikum.
I write this appeal from Dubai where I am in transit for a few hours before returning home tonight. It was brought to my attention by Agha Mousavi from London that there is an acute water crisis in Basra, Iraq. Thousands of our own poor are deprived of this essential resource due to the contaminated waters of Furaat. The government is working on a permanent solution but it will take at least 2 years before the work is done and drinkable water restored.
In the interim, several relief organizations, including Comfort Aid International, is pitching in to assist, especially for the Holy month of Ramadhan. The need is for 36,000 liters of water to be trucked in and around the poor and destitute residents of Basra for a cost of US $200 per day. Agha has requested for a commitment of at least 3 months, which is $18,000 out of which $12,000 has already been pledged by other organizations. CAI has been requested to pledge the balance $6,000. I have not given the commitment until I have reasonable assurance/chance of collection. Agha's office out of London and Najaf will oversee the distribution.
If you can, please pledge urgently so that I can in turn give CAI's commitment. Any amount you can pledge, it will all add up, Insha'Allah. Remember, this is Iraq, the tortured land of Imam Hussein (AS), still being tortured.
Ramadhan Mubarak, may Allah (SWT) accept our supplications and sacrifice. My current India trip report will be forthcoming shortly.
Click here for some photos of water distribution in Ramadhan.
Salaam aleykum.
Kashmir Earthquake Housing Project:
Click here for some photos of the housing support provided to the victims of the Kashmir Earthquake.
Hovels of 41 families restored:
Click here for some before and after photos. Each hovel restoration averages US$1400; one bedroom catch-all, with a tiny kitchen on one corner and a toilet in another. The importance of the toilet cannot be stressed enough. Without it, women and girls had to trek quarter mile for a mere call of nature, under the gaze of many men. Another successful effort, but much remains to be done as there are hundreds of Mo'meens who still languish in miserable hovels that is a torment to live during monsoon season.
Mumra Boys Orphanage:
This project was an emotional one. The orphanage was crumbling and in very bad shape. Total cost of complete restoration was a whooping US$160,000! I could not even consider attempting it but tried nevertheless. After raising $80,000, I lost hope; no further funds were coming forth. When I was in the depth of despair, one single donor wrote a check for the balance. Alhamd'Allah!!!
Water wells:
14 water wells dug in areas where water is very scarce and precious. This project has literally restored the livelihood of farmers that were having a very hard time. It has also provided for nearby mosques where water for wudhoo was a hardship. Click here for photos of the wells.
Kashmir winters:
As you may be aware, winters are brutal, with very little in the way of heating homes. We have provided close to 3,000 heavy blankets at the cost of US$10 each to the poor in Kashmir, especially in Kargil where Mo'meens have been displaced due to the warfare between Pakistan and India.
Water wells in the South:
This is self explanatory. These projects benefit not a single person or family; rather, it alleviates the desperation of an entire village. Even saving families from starvation and ruin.
Higher education for girls:
Unfortunately, due to ignorance in some of us, girls tend to get overlooked or sometimes deliberately ignored when it comes to higher education. This is unfair, unwise and against any religion. Girls go on to become mothers and eventual teachers to their children. Our program assists adolescent girls of promise from poor and destitute for higher education or training into fields of nursing or teaching.
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