COE UAE Food and Clothes Distribution to Laborers

... by Kehkashan Basu ,COE Hub Leader UAE

We are a group of ordinary citizen volunteers who want to alleviate the pain and suffering of the poor laborers in our city, Dubai . Throughout the week we receive donations from our friends – these can be in cash or kind . Normally, we seek donations of food stuff , clothes , toiletries and other articles of daily use . The cash that is received is also utilized to purchase similar articles.

We gather every Friday morning , which is the weekend here . With our cars loaded with these goodies , we drive to a different labour camp each weekend . We contact the camp boss early on so that the people staying in these camps are aware of our arrival .

They are all decent folk who have fallen upon hard times and they queue up in an orderly fashion to receive aid . As I am the youngest in the group , I am usually the one chosen to hand out the food , clothes and other stuff we have collected . Our cars which are loaded to the brim at the outset , empty out in no time. On any given day , we are able to cater to about 400 laborers . Sadly every time some of them go away empty handed which fills us all with sadness . There is never enough for all . But this keeps us going and motivates us to try harder.

As Mother Teresa said “If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one”.