Sri Lanka – UL Sadiqa
24 year old Sadiqa lives with her elderly parents. Her father is 70 years old and too sick to work. Her mother runs a small poultry farm with 50 chickens. Sadiqa also lives with her two elder brothers. Both suffer from mental illness which places a strain on the time and limited resources that the family has. The eldest has suffered with the illness since birth. The second became ill following his marriage which has since ended.“I face many difficulties in my family…We have financial problems and I have to help my family take care of my brothers. With my mother’s earnings ... ...
Malawi –Nyoko Paleta and Nashawa Waiti
Nyoko and Nashawa are sisters who live with their grandmother Gabriella. Their parents passed away when Nyoko was 5 and Nashawa was only 2. Their younger sister was just 6 months old. Together, like many others in Malawi, they face problems with shortages of food, water, clothes, blankets and basic materials for school. To feed the girls, their grandmother depends solely on subsistence farming. But because of the size of the cultivatable land available to them - just 0.12 ha - she finds it difficult to produce enough food for them all. To make matters worse, farming is also difficult due to ... ...
Albania - Ervin Ismajlaj
Ervin is 15 years old. He has just finished the 1st grade of Madrasa. Ervin joined Madrasa only one year ago. He finished the elementary level (1-8th grade) at another school. Ervin is an excellent student. His favorite subject is learning Kur'an. In fact he won the 2nd place at the National Competition on Kur'an where, besides all the Madrasas of the country, participated pupils from Macedonia as well. Ervin is living together with his parents and an elder sister. His father is a ex - military officer at the moment jobless. While his mother works in a sewing enterprise. Ervin has always ... ...
Chechnya - Seda Mahmudova
Seda Mahmudova is 8 years old, living with her father, mother and three brothers. She is one of the children who benefited from the School Feeding project conducted in Dolinskoye Village in Chechnya. In a typical school day, Seda gets up early in the morning, has breakfast and then goes to school. When she arrives back from school she has dinner, does her home tasks and goes outdoors. In winter she enjoys sledging with her friends.TO describe the difficulties she faces in her life, Seda says: “It is very difficult to live without sufficient water and electricity supply. We often ... ...
Bosnia - Kadric Bajro
55 year old Kadric Bajro lives with his wife Beguna in the village of Gladovici, about 20 kms outside Srebrenica. They had two sons but both were killed during the war. Their deaths have affected Kadric immensely. Nowadays he spends much of his time in his field alone with his sheep.Kadric’s sheep were purchased with an interest free loan from Islamic Relief as part of its Microcredit scheme that helps people rebuild their lives and their livelihoods. Before this, Kadric had little to do: he would get bored easily and didn’t have any stable income. Now though he spends most of his ... ...
Palestine – Atteya Abdo
When Rawhi Abdo died of cancer at the age of 39, he left behind him a wife and 5 children. In trying to cure his illness and because of the high cost of medical care in Palestine, the family spent their entire wealth on different treatments. Because of his untimely death, the family were left with no support whatsoever until a neighbour suggested they contact Islamic Relief. Islamic Relief were able to help and found sponsors for two of the children - Hussain 13 and Atteya 10 - as part of its One to One Orphan Sponsorship programme During visits, Islamic Relief workers discovered that the ... ...
India – Mastan Sahib
Following a long typhoid illness, 60 year old Mastan Sahib is now bound to a chair. He can no longer work – he used to be a coolie - as he cannot move around but he does sometimes go out into the neighbourhood and socialise with others in the Nagbanda Village, Pungnoor.Mastan lives with Baba Jan his only son. Their home does not have electricity and the water has to be fetched from a nearby community facility. Baba Jan is 16 years old and works in a tea-stall and earns Rs. 40/- (US$ 0.80) per day. He has worked on the tea stall as well as cared for his father for the past ten years. ... ...
Niger – Gambi
The poorest and most vulnerable people in the world are also those who are most at risk from water and sanitation problems. In most of these societies, it is also the women and children that bear the responsibility for fetching water which can be a time-consuming and physically demanding duty. On average, women in Africa have to walk approximately 6km a day to get their water. This was the case in the Tillaberi region of Niger where 40 year old Gambi Kailou lives with her seven children. For her, “The main difficulties are food and water problems. We have only a well for this village ... ...
