If we think about the message of charitable and humanitarian work today and reflect on reality and ambition, we can often reduce the message to the form of feeding the hungry poor, watering the thirsty, dressing the naked, sheltering the homeless and the displaced, sponsoring an orphan, educating the ignorant, treating the sick, building a mosque, or printing a Qur’an, and training in a craft.
All of these are blessed and good deeds, and this is an example but not limited to, but in light of these tragedies and calamities in the east and west of the earth and whose children are turning gray, if we think carefully and ask ourselves whether we have made a clear and lasting impact, no matter how much donations and assistance we offer, and every benefactor is rewarded and rewarded by God .
And I say no matter what capabilities we have at the level of governments, peoples and NGOs, in this field, and despite our efforts to meet these needs and necessities of the afflicted peoples as much as we can, which is a good and excellent thing, but the question that arises today, what is required and desired in this proposal?
I say, and God grant success, and as an example, if the sponsorship of the orphan does not turn into enabling his widowed mother to do a job that will generate a stable source of money for her, unless we enable the orphan with knowledge, skill or craft, we train and qualify him to be a constructive dependant in his community, instead of him being a dependency waiting for the monthly sponsorship. It has been cut off, and unless we teach this naked how to sew clothes to cover his nakedness, and unless we contribute to reconsidering the outputs of education centers established by charitable societies, and unless we improve and improve their level, and review their curricula to meet the needs of demand in the market, each in a manner that suits his environment and circumstances.
This requires that charitable work be directed and move to another aspect of volunteering to craft and professionalism as is found in developed countries, and unless that happens - and God knows best - then we are like those who plow in water, so we turn around in this narrow horizon around ourselves, and we get busy day and night In the urgent relief sector, which has drained a lot of alms, zakat, endowments and bequests, and some charities are repeating what their counterparts do, regardless of creativity and excellence and proceeding according to the methodology of starting from where the others ended, and this is considered today a challenge in the face of charitable work and those in charge of it.
Salah Ahmad Al - Jarallah,
Secretary General
10.08.2020
