Though the month of Ramadan is over, act of giving is a year-long activity for Muslims worldwide.
In Halifax city, Northern England, the Muslim community has launched a community fridge to provide free food to the needy and prevent food waste.
Volunteers from the Central Jamia Mosque set up the fridge for people to come and take whatever food they need.
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“It’s a lifeline for people,” Hassan Riaz, who launched an initiative to help the needy at the start of the pandemic, told Yorkshire Live.
“It’s more than a fridge, it’s actually brought so many parts of the community together in the most impoverished part of Calderdale.”
A free library to promote reading was unveiled this week (Image: Halifax Community Kitchen)
Riaz’s initiative grew from distributing food parcels to building a permanent home for the initiative on the grounds of the mosque.
The fridge open seven days a week, including holidays like Christmas, New Year and `Eid, because, as Riaz said,“food poverty exists every day of the year.”
The fridge receives donations from local supermarkets (Image: Halifax Community Fridge)
Support
The initiative was widely supported by individuals and businesses, supermarkets, MP Holly Lynch and even a schoolboy who donated the pocket money he had saved up to buy a new game.
“A young guy from a local school saved up some pocket money and rather than spending this money, after saving up for a couple of months, on an XBox or the new PlayStation, he donated it to the fridge,” Riaz said.
“Now he regularly visits the fridge and helps out on a Sunday at the community kitchen we run there.”
“We put a status out about that, and there were so many people around the UK who were offering him an XBox and a PlayStation.
“We got in touch with the family, and he said ‘no, look, I don’t want the XBox or the PlayStation,” and instead, he devoted his time and energy to the community kitchen.
Islam lays a great emphasis on the virtue of neighborliness, stressing on Muslims’ individual duty to be good to their neighbors.
Last August, , the umbrella of the Muslim Charities Forum (MCF) said that 194 charities have provided a range of services for those most in need due to the pandemic.