An Ilorin-based Non-Governmental Organisation, the Pious Muslim Women has congratulated all Nigerian Muslims on this year’s holy month of Ramadan.
Founder of the group, Dr. Hamdalat Yusuf, said the feeding programme was the sixth since 2014 when the group was established.
“Every year, we organize our Ramadan Feeding Programme aimed at benefiting the vulnerable in the society. Ramadan Feeding programme is a succor to widows, orphans and indigent Muslims in our community. We cover the major towns of nine states in Nigeria in which most of our members reside. The states are Kwara, Lagos, Osun, Ogun, Oyo, Kaduna, Kano, Niger and Rivers States.”
“Our usual practice is to give raw food stuff such as rice, beans, garri, wheat, semovita and groundnut oil, amongst others. However, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year, we decided to give a sum of N5000 to each of our beneficiaries. The target is to feed about 2000 people across these states”, she said.
Yusuf who said the feeding exercise will gulp about N10 million to feed 2000 people added that Pious Muslim Women generates the bulk of its funds from the contributions of members not only in several states of Nigeria but are also in countries like Canada, UK, South Africa, Ghana, Dubai, etc.
She stressed that the organisation, whose activities are mostly online, was founded primarily to improve on the spiritual development of its members. However, it has expanded its focus to accommodate the welfare of the indigent ones especially the vulnerable in the society.
Some of its programmes include youth empowerment through the free training of youths at its fashion training institute; providing support for entrepreneurial efforts of no fewer than 50 widows every year; scholarship grants to about 20 orphans at the three levels of education as well as ownership and maintenance of an orphanage where it takes full responsibility for 10 orphans from age infancy to age ten.