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As-salaam Alaikum everyone!
Here's a brief look at our More Than A Meal program, which is one of our programs aimed at providing hunger relief to underprivileged groups.
We began our More Than A Meal program in November of 2021 by preparing meals and buying hygiene products for those that were unhoused in Downtown Fayetteville, NC. We started out with three members, 10 meals, and a few hygiene products. At this time, it was difficult to find people that needed our help because of the cold weather and because we were a small, unfamiliar organization. Because of this limitation, we only held our program once every other month.
Around February 2022, we decided that it would be better to carry out our More Than A Meal program every Sunday, with roughly 10-15 meals. As the weeks went on, we noticed that the people we were helping were telling others about us and our organization! Alhamdulillah, this then meant that we had to make more meals and have even more supplies ready.
Eventually, we started recruiting volunteers and having a fixed routine: Sundays at the Cumberland County Public Library around 4:00 p.m. during the cold seasons and around 6:00 p.m. during the warm seasons. We also changed our meal count from 15 meals to around 40 - 50 meals weekly. Our success in the Downtown area has since led us to have over 20 volunteers come out with us on a regular basis! In addition to having more volunteers, we also decided to host special More Than A Meal events! These events have allowed us to bring other organizations out in order to provide essential services to those that are unhoused in the area. Some of these services focus on mental health, flu shots, covid testing, jobs, and housing.
So far we have had two special events: Vets for Vets and A Dollar and A Dream. In honor of Veteran's Day, we came up with a Vets for Vets event. For this event, we had active and retired military members come out and help us provide meals and other essential items and services to those that are unhoused Downtown. We also partnered with other organizations in order to provide essential services.
In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we decided to have an event called A Dollar and A Dream. For this event, we thought it would be nice to combine the inspiration from Dr. King and, being a Fayetteville native, J. Cole. A popular J. Cole lyric and song, "a dollar and a dream," showcases that you can still achieve your dreams, even if all you have is nothing. J. Cole essentially started with a dollar and a dream, and now he is a renowned rapper. Similar to our own organization, which started out as just a dream has now, Alhamdulillah, grown into what it is today.
Ultimately, we hosted A Dollar and A Dream in order to inspire hope in our community using themes seen in J Cole's lyrics and MLK Jr.'s speeches. We gave a couple of speeches at our event and had multiple organizations come out, including the Fayetteville Marksmen. This event has laid the foundation for our A Dollar and A Dream program, which aims to improve access to essential resources for underprivileged groups in the areas that we operate in.
Other than Fayetteville, NC, we have also taken our More Than A Meal program to Herstelling, Guyana. In November 2022, we provided food hampers filled with essential groceries to approximately 65 low-income families. We have also sent numerous barrels filled with clothing, canned goods, medical supplies, etc. that have been and will continue to be distributed to struggling families in different areas of Guyana.
InShaAllah, we are also working towards establishing this program in Cairo, Egypt. We will continue to provide updates once we're able to move forward in this area. We are also starting this program in the Pearland/Houston, Texas area and look forward to bringing it to even more places in the future InShaAllah!
As always, thank you for supporting us!
We are eternally grateful for everyone's support, and we look forward to seeing how many places we can bring this program to InShaAllah! If you'd like to volunteer with us, check out our "Get Involved" page for more information and for our "Volunteer Form."
Please like/follow/share us on Facebook and Instagram @nonprofit.allyfoundation and check out our other blog posts!
- J. Cole
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