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GULFWEEKLY is urging its readers to open their hearts, pick up their smartphones and lend a helping hand to a global initiative which is providing food and comfort to those in need, writes Kristian Harrison.
Bahrain’s campaigning community newspaper has joined up with Mumtalakat, the kingdom’s sovereign wealth fund, to support its Spirit of Ramadan double caring and sharing programme.
The aim is to not only assist The Conserving Bounties Society’s annual local call to provide food packages for underprivileged families and labourers but also to provide meals to children in need around the world through the smartphone application, ShareTheMeal, designed to help fight global hunger through the UN World Food Programme (WFP).
Suha Matar, Mumtalakat’s head of communications and public affairs, said: “Through the crowd-funding smartphone application, ShareTheMeal, staff members will be encouraged to contribute to Mumtalakat’s online team #Mumtalakat4BH to make small donations to specific WFP projects.
“To that end, we have set ourselves the challenge of sharing 10,000 meals during the month of Ramadan. Having said that, we will continue to promote our team and the app during the year and, hopefully, make more donations!”
ShareTheMeal enables users to make small donations to specific WFP projects and to track its progress. In 2018 alone, ShareTheMeal was downloaded more than a million times and 11,321,483 meals were shared, equating to one every three seconds. Ongoing projects provide meals for children in Syria, Palestine, India and refugee camps across the world.
German pair Sebastian Stricker and Bernhard Kowatsch founded ShareTheMeal in 2014 in Berlin during a sabbatical as an independent start-up. In the summer of the following year, as part of a pilot scheme before its launch, the app achieved its first fundraising target by providing 1.8 million schools meals to children in Lesotho after a drive in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
The app launched globally on November 12, 2015 for iOS and Android devices. The global launch campaign raised funds to give school meals to 20,000 Syrian children living in the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan for one year. It was successfully completed in less than two months.
Between January and April 2016, ShareTheMeal raised funds to support 2,000 mothers and their babies in Homs, Syria, for a full year. In spring 2016, the app raised funds to support 1,400 Syrian refugee children between the ages of three and four in Beirut. These goals were completed in less than seven weeks and the app continues to go from strength-to-strength.
Stricker said: “There are 821 million undernourished people in the world today. That means one in nine people do not get enough food to lead an active and healthy life.
“In fact, hunger and malnutrition are the Number One risk to health worldwide – greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined. The good news is that hunger is entirely solvable and that’s why we are reaching out to people worldwide, including the people of Bahrain, to work together to reduce this number significantly”
ShareTheMeal prides itself on its transparency, with every single shared meal tracked so that app users can see the progress and where it is distributed. Through its partners, it keeps costs low, meaning that just $0.50 can feed one child for a day. Furthermore, it strongly focuses on sustainability so that individuals and communities can provide for themselves in the future.
GulfWeekly readers have a chance to ensure Spirit of Ramadan makes its own mark throughout the holy month and beyond. Follow #Mumtalakat4BH for more details.
Download the ShareTheMeal app from AppStore or GooglePlay and join #Mumtalakat4BH team
