Donating Masks to Homeless Shelters

Azeez Ishaqui is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Huma Ishaqui.

Donation protected

Short Film - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yk7ehiAjhCUl46t8TRdlYCpvOmL8oDZZ/view?usp=sharing

Website - https://sites.google.com/view/charity4all/home?authuser=1

AJC Article - https://www.ajc.com/inspire/westminster-student-helps-the-poor-on-two-continents/QYEARM2445G3NCU42VGCM6PRCI/

For those who care to read about the full story and would like to see pictures, please scroll down and read below. What I'm asking for is any spare change that can contribute to the production of masks. With this money I can pay the fabric cutters, the impoverished widowed seamstresses, and ship the handmade masks back to the US to donate to homeless shelters and nursing homes. If you need more information/photos of my project, please reach out to my account and I can provide you with my phone number. Pictures are at the bottom of the text.

I can't help but notice the immense amount of poverty every-time I go to visit India. I always do little things to help when I go there, such as giving some food or money to some homeless people, or helping my cousins out in various ways. I wanted to fix these problems for the long term rather than a short term aid with money. We started slowly in 2017. Annually during the month of Ramadan, I thought of providing staples to poor families. I chose Ramadan as it is a spiritual month for Muslims and the month of fasting. The idea of not knowing when your next meal will be especially while fasting is something I couldn't imagine. As blessed as I am to know that I will have something ready after a long day of fasting, I wanted to make sure that I could help impoverished people feel the same way through providing them with food. The next part of my project is donating carts to the poor men who have to carry their goods from place to place. I was able to gather enough money to have built 5 carts (each ~7000 rupees) and donate them to 5 families every year since then. While the carts were the first part of my project in 2017, I expanded to sewing machines in 2018. Most of the women in these villages were widows, and in such a society it is already difficult enough for them to find a job, let alone care for their families by themselves. I annually provide 5 sewing machines (6500rupees each) for these women, which includes teaching them how to sew. Skip forward to know and I'm thinking about how to make myself resourceful during the times of COVID-19, and thought about how I can tie in my India project to help my community during this pandemic. I'd donated most of my savings towards this cause and pitched my project to family members to try and affect as many people as possible. As these women were already sewing for nearby hospitals, I thought maybe if we provided the correct materials and processes they could even sow protective masks. I began to research on the type of material needed and passed it to the families to stitch these masks. Once these masks have been created, I will then get them donated to nearby homeless shelters and nursing homes after they are shipped to the US. With the money I collected from my own pocket money as well as family/friends, I have around 1000 masks in production with 300 already donated to homeless shelters.

Ramadan Staples/Line: