Around a hundred families lined up in Cathays on Thursday, July 6, as a local mosque gave out free food bags. Dar Ul-Isra Muslim Welfare and Education Centre set up a food drive in the community after receiving a generous donation of Qurbani meat and groceries from a charity.
Every year during the Islamic month of Dhul Hijjah, Muslims slaughter an animal – a goat, sheep, cow or camel – to reflect the Prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail, for the sake of God. The meat is then distributed to people who are most in need.
In partnership with Islamic Relief, volunteers from Dar Ul-Isra mosque prepared around 300 food parcels - with the meat donation - for pick-up collection and distribution around Ely, Grangetown and Roath. Due to the cost of living crisis, many families are struggling to afford food and the mosque is doing everything it can to help its local community and beyond.
Doors to the building opened at 6.30pm for the public to collect the donations, but volunteers said that the queues started forming outside the mosque at 4pm. As families picked up a parcel - containing cupboard staples and hygiene products - and a portion of meat, a variety of people walked through the door. From refugees and asylum seekers to Ukrainians, the elderly, single mums, students, and young families - Dar Ul-Isra mosque welcomed all who were in financial need.
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Dar Ul-Isra mosque also runs a popular food bank every Saturday at 12pm, which has been running for the last four years. Naveed Rahman, an organiser of the food bank, said that there has been a huge demand for food donations since the cost of living crisis. He said: “We’ve steadily seen an increase over the last four years for our weekly food service that we run. Obviously, things like this is an extension of that - a one-off - where we tend to give a lot more. The fact that people queue two to three hours before we open just shows the cost of living crisis is real for a lot of families and it’s just got more acute as the years go on.”
Naveed added that he sees the same faces coming to the food bank each week, noting that any money they have goes straight on their bills as they’re not able to afford “basic things” any more due to "the increase in utilities and everything else."
“From when we started - we spread the news through the whole community - so more than 50% of our attendees are not Muslim. What’s surprising is how far people come from. We have people coming from Splott, Tremorfa, west Cardiff and often they walk to us. It’s not unusual for us to see attendees on a Saturday queue from 8am, and our doors open at 12pm,” said Naveed. He added that around 40 to 60 families turn up to the mosque each week for the food bank.
Dar Ul-Isra mosque gets the majority of its donations from supermarkets in the area and has a partnership with FareShare - taking 150kg from them each week. For the first time in four years, about three months ago food supplies that were coming into FareShare from the supermarkets were “drying up” and the mosque only received 50kg.
Naveed said: “We had to reach out to the community and they responded magnificently - we raised around £10,000 in a month. So what we’re doing now is topping up the shortfall by doing our own private shopping every Saturday.
“We’re trying our best to accommodate everybody, but it’s becoming harder and harder.” Naveed hopes to set up a drop-off point in front of the mosque soon so members of the community are able to drop off food donations for their Saturday food bank, which is open to anyone who needs it.
Helen Criddle is a volunteer and has been with the mosque since 2015. Tonight she has been busy driving around Cardiff dropping food parcels to families in need. She said: “We try to spread it all over Cardiff and it’s great we have so many volunteers.” Helen added that tin goods, dental products, and feminine hygiene items are among the most important products for people to donate.
“We normally do this every year - but just the meat - but because we had this big donation there’s also the extra groceries - like the squash, toothpaste, toothbrush, oil, sugar etc.”
Rashid Campbell, the Midlands events co-ordinator for Islamic Relief, travelled to Dar Ul-Isra mosque for the first time to assist with the food bank. He said: "This is part of our UK programme where we help the local community here - and all over UK in the major cities. This time of year is called Qurbani, which is the sacrifice that our profit Abraham did and the word Qurbani means ‘to become close’. Through this act of sharing, we want to become close to our neighbours, to our community and god. That’s what Qurbani’s about.
“I wasn’t really surprised [by today’s response] because of the cost of living crisis - you can see the amount of people queuing around the mosque. There must have been 100+ families here today and everybody got something. Hopefully next year we’ll do stuff bigger and better for everybody.”
