KUWAIT: The Islamic tradition highly discourages food wastage. Surat Al-Surat Al-Isra from the Holy Quran states, "Indeed, the wasteful are brothers of the devils, and ever has Satan been to his Lord ungrateful.

Stemmed from her firm belief that charity shouldn't be burdensome to others, Umm Mohammad, a 54-year old retired Kuwaiti started a service that is one of its kind: She collects leftovers from banquets at parties, weddings and feasts, packages the food in individual Styrofoam boxes and delivers it to the poor. She doesn't take any money in return. "The joy I feel when I see the smiles on the faces of the poor and needy people who receive the food is more than enough of a reward," she says.

Different charity organizations in Kuwait take monetary donations to feed needy people, but no organization takes donations in food. Umm Mohammad's schedule in Ramadan is busy with collecting food from locations across the country. If Umm Mohammad can't attend to the task personally during evening, she and her network of volunteers would go the next day to collect the food and package it as individual meals for Iftar (meal time) the following day. "If we collect the food early after the Ghabqa, we deliver
it as Sohoor (meal time). If we are late, we take the food and pack it for the next day, and deliver it as Iftar," she explains. The load increases immensely during Ramadan, making it difficult to answer every call she receives. If the person who calls her is willing and if she doesn't have the time to drive to where they live, she gives them an address to which they can deliver.

Throughout her years of doing charity, Umm Mohammad spoke to a number of established organizations about the possibility of doing this work through their facilities, "The bureaucracy even reaches a humane act like charity in Kuwait. I tried several times but found that the complications make it lose its essence of charity. I prefer to talk to people, and deliver the food to the needy as their equal. As a charity organization, we suffer in Kuwait, making the work lose its essence," she complained.

The Ministry of Awqaf, which was at first supportive of Umm Mohammad's initiatives, decided to withdraw backing for the project after realizing that the Municipality disagrees with the nature of the project, "Because we deliver food, we were told that the food might not be edible when we deliver it. Of course that is not true, we all eat leftovers. Everybody keeps leftovers in their fridge and preheats them the next day, besides we usually give away the food we collect within a day.

Umm Mohammad started doing this in 1996, 15 years ago, "I was in Farwaniya one summer afternoon, running errands. I saw three Asian workers sitting in the shade of a tree, sharing a bottle of water and a bag of bread. I felt bad and gave them a small amount of money so they can buy themselves some lunch. They were sitting a few meters away from a restaurant, but they couldn't afford the food," she recounts.

Several days later, Umm Mohammad was at a wedding of a friend's relative. When the wedding was over, the catering company started packing the leftovers to dispose them off. "I asked them where they take them, and they said they would throw them out. Immediately, I thought of those poor workers sitting in the heat, hungry and tired. I asked my friend if I can take the food and give it to someone, and she was more than happy with the idea," she says. That night, Umm Mohammad packed the food and drove to Farw
aniya. She stopped at the fuel station there and gave the workers boxes full of food and cake. She told them to take the food home, share it with their friends and roommates.

I know that people have a lot of leftovers. People here are generous, but they don't have the time to go look for needy people to give them the food. I enjoy helping out. I help delivering the food to the hungry people, and I help the people who have leftovers to donate that food. I'm just a link between the two," she adds.

Throughout the years, Umm Mohammad found a number of volunteers willing to assist her. These volunteers include gas station attendants, baqala keepers, and doormen of apartment buildings. "The volunteers I work with help me deliver the food to people who are in need. When I have a large quantity of food, I deliver it to them and they deliver it to others in the area," she explains. - Kuwait Times