Feature: Egyptian charity kitchen provides hundreds of fresh meals to poor, homeless people

by Mahmoud Fouly, Abdel-Maguid Kamal

SHARQIYA, Egypt, March 20 (Xinhua) -- In a vast kitchen inside a ground-floor apartment in Sharqiya province north of the Egyptian capital Cairo, three women were busy preparing vegetables before sending them to a nearby chef who was cooking a large amount of rice in a huge cooking pot with a tall ladle in his hand.

Two hours later, about 10 young people wearing gloves took the cooked food and the green salad, packed in disposable plastic and foam plates, organized them into separate one-person meals with an orange or any other fruit added to each meal, and put them on shelves to be ready for distribution.

The activities are almost the daily work of a charity kitchen initiative that started in 2016 with three volunteers and ended up with at least 35 volunteers providing from 300 to 500 fresh, healthy meals for poor and homeless people now for three days a week.

"The Charity Kitchen is a youth initiative that started in January 2016 under the name of 'Anti-Hunger Forces' and is now gaining more volunteers as a unique experience that provides fresh hot meals for the poor," Suzan el-Moslemany, founder of the initiative, told Xinhua at the Charity Kitchen in Zagazig city.

Moslemany started the initiative by cooking at home. After the initiative gained more popularity, more and more volunteers joined and donations came, allowing her to rent a place to store food.

She also established the "Zwad" charity to support the poor.

Each meal consisted of rice, grilled fish, green salad and an orange.

"Our activities are based on donations. We used to work every day, but now we provide our meals three days a week after the price hikes," said Moslemany, adding that the Charity Kitchen provides different healthy meals each day containing proteins, starches, vegetables and fruits.

"We do not receive financial support from any institution and this is one of the obstacles we're facing. The door for volunteers and donations is open, for we're all partners of benevolence," she emphasized.

The co-founders of the Charity Kitchen are currently preparing a bigger kitchen to cook 1,000 meals per day, particularly during the imminent Muslim holy month of Ramadan, to provide fast-breaking meals (iftar) for fasting poor people.

"If we provide meals for all poor families, we need 2,500 meals every day, so we can distribute them in rotation to provide the poor and homeless of each neighborhood with meals once a week," Moslemany told Xinhua.

The Charity Kitchen focuses on poor aged and lonely people, sick people and orphans, and it has a team whose mission is to find distressed families and deliver food to their homes.

Sayyid Ahmed, 40, has been the Charity Kitchen's volunteer chef for more than a year and two months.

"I saw the Charity Kitchen's Facebook page, I liked the idea and contacted the founders to join," Ahmed told Xinhua while stirring the rice in the cooking pot with a ladle, noting that he cooks a different meal each day.

As for Ahmed Sherif, a 35-year-old computer engineer, his task is to promote the Charity Kitchen online through posting pictures of the meals and the charitable activities held by Zwad on Facebook.

"Before I joined the Charity Kitchen, I could not imagine that poor people would go to bed in hunger at the end of the day, for being unable to buy dinner for themselves or their children," the volunteer told Xinhua.

The target beneficiaries of the Charity Kitchen are those poor people who do not beg others for money in the streets, which is why the Zwad staff deliver them food mostly at their homes.

"People here are motivated by love and benevolence, working 11 hours a day to serve people who cannot afford healthy food," said Mohamed Gamal, a 36-year-old lawyer who buys the necessary food ingredients from the marketplace.

He noted that some storeowners give them a discount up to 50 percent to take part in their charitable activities, adding that he experiences many touching situations during his task.

"I once gave a doorman a meal and he put it aside. When I asked him why he didn't eat, he said he would share it with his two children, so I gave him more for them," the man told Xinhua.