Guelph’s Danby Appliances, in collaboration with Canadian charity Global Medic, assembled over 200 volunteers and 67,000 meals. The meals are to be delivered to at-risk communities in the dangerous, war-torn regions across Syrian border.
In a day’s time, the volunteers mixed, packed, and stacked thousands of meals for vulnerable families. The meal plan consisted of a dry mix to a traditional Syrian dish called mujadara, created by a group of Syrian women through the Toronto-based non-profit, organization, Newcomer Kitchen. The main ingredients to the dish are green lentils, fried onions, and bulgar (consisting mostly of durum wheat).
After being assembled in Guelph, the food was repacked in Toronto along with an emergency supply kit that is added to each bucket (each containing 14 meals) which will be delivered to the communities in need by partner agencies associated with GlobalMedic.
Rahul Singh, the executive director of GlobalMedic told The Hamilton Spectator that over 13.5 million Syrians were affected by war and a majority were insecure of food.
Their main goal of this campaign was to create an easy to make, inexpensive to produce, nutritious and tasty meal that is familiar to the target communities, Singh also said that the families are facing various challenges and, through GlobalMedic and its partner agencies, the volunteers hope to deliver the food packages to the areas that have been hit the hardest.
The aim of creating such an easy-to-make food packet was to enable an individual to simply empty the contents into a pot of boiling water and have enough food to keep their family alive. Yet, even though the food packets are delievered to the regions that need it the most, there is a shortage of food and supplies.
Danby’s CEO, Jim Estill, donated 1.5 million dollars to sponsoring more than 85 refugee families, majority of whom came to Canada from Syria. He teamed up with Singh to share their collective story of the nonprofit’s mission, and the impact that Danby has had in its efforts to help settle many refugee families who were in need.
