Charity kitchens emerge in Syria during Ramadan

As large segments of the Syrian people have become unable to make ends meet or secure their basic needs due to the economic hardship in the unrest-torn country, charity kitchens have emerged as a new trend among the Syrian youths, especially during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
"Sakbat Ramadan," or the Dish of Ramadan, is the name of a charity kitchen set up by more than 30 young Syrians, including Christians, who have expressed willingness to help their fellow Syrians in the fasting month of Ramadan.
Setting up their kitchen at an ally in the ancient part of Damascus city, the volunteers set a daily target to cook between 2, 000 and 3,000 meals enough for 9,000 needy Syrians each day. Every day they cook something different and they get the ingredients and foodstuffs from donations. "We don't accept money only in-kind donations," read a sign hoisted atop the non-governmental group's makeshift kitchen.
Their campaign slogan urges capable Syrians to donate or to even be a part of the volunteer team. "Oh good people, our initiative is ongoing by your volunteer and in-kind contribution. We are waiting for you!"
This is the second year for the Sakbat Ramadan group, whose volunteers and members work under the supervision of Bader Group, a non-governmental organization for humanitarian development.
The group's volunteers start their work at 12 noon each day in Ramadan, where people fast from dawn till dusk. They keep cooking and packing the food until 6 p.m. when delegations of 18 neighborhoods in Damascus arrive to collect the meals to distribute them to the needy families in accordance to a survey conducted ahead of Ramadan.
Majd Issa, a chef who has volunteered in the group with his twin brother, said the volunteers there "are working as one family. "
"We start working at 12 noon and we stay here till sunset till we make sure that all of the foods have been distributed. Let me say that in Ramadan we want the Syrian to help his fellow Syrian," he told Xinhua.
For his part, Alaa Qassem, HR employee at Bader Organization, told Xinhua that "the food is distributed after being cooked by trained teams of our organization that deals with delegations of neighborhoods. These delegations or popular representatives deliver the food to the needy people in each neighborhood in Damascus according to a survey conducted earlier."
Speaking more about the idea behind the Dish of Ramadan, Qassem said "the concept of the Dish of Ramadan is to revive an old tradition that used to take place in the past, when people used to cook extra meals during Ramadan and exchange dishes with their neighbors so that everyone would taste different dish everyday in the fasting month."
Sham, a volunteer, was chopping onion with a bunch of volunteers in the makeshift kitchen in old Damascus. She had tears in her eyes because of the onion, but kept smiling anyways, as her friends were joking with her, asking her to stop crying and be happy. "I am here because I wanted to help people. A lot of people are in need with no one there to help them. And here we all work as one family. I have learnt about this initiative from friends and the internet and becoming a volunteer is very simple," she said.
These manifestations are new in Syria. People in the past used to help each other, but volunteering into groups to help the needy is one of the products of the Syrian crisis that has reportedly moved Syria 35 years backward in the human development index.
A report issued by the Syrian Center for Policy Research said more than half of the Syrian population is living below the poverty line with the unemployment rate soaring to unprecedented levels due to the crisis.
The number of the poor in Syria before the crisis was around 5. 5 million people and in late 2013 reached 12 million out of the country's pre-war 23 million inhabitants.
Worst still, the steep depreciation of the Syrian pound against the U.S. dollar has further overburdened the Syrian people and drove prices of all items skyrocketing.