— American-Egyptian expat Nancy ElBassiouny, philanthropist
IRREPRESSIBLE: Nancy Elbassiouny has been volunteering for refugees and orphans for more than a decade. Photo by Umer Nangiana
By Umer Nangiana
The poignant image of a dark-haired toddler, wearing a bright-red t-shirt and blue shorts, washed up on a beach in Turkey, lying face down, went viral recently. It was three-year-old Aylan Kurdi, one of the 12 Syrian refugees, who perished trying to escape death from civil war in their country a fateful night earlier this month.
The picture, depicting the refugees’ plight, shook the entire world. With everybody else, she too mourned and grieved the death. But then, she quickly moved to save other refugee children, as many as she could, the fate of Aylan.
“We are grieving as humanity because we lost one of our own. But what do we do now? We have to think about solutions. We cannot go back and reverse what has happened. We have to think about the people who are alive,” suggests Nancy ElBassiouny, as she talks to Community.
As we speak, she is packing warm clothes and other relief items, for both children and adults, from a large stack of donations that people have dropped at her lodging in Qatar’s high-end The Pearl Island. The donated suite-cased stuff would reach Syrian refugees, settled in different areas of the region, through local and international charity organisations.
She is even herself flying to Beirut, Lebanon, for a night to just help distribute the aid among Syrian refugees settled there. She would be back in time to join office today.
Nancy, an American-Egyptian expat, working for a gas company, has been helping refugees and orphans as a volunteer with humanitarian organisations in different parts of the world for more than a decade now. Moved by Aylan’s image, she urged friends in her social media circle to help the refugees with whatever they can. The response was overwhelming.
“Those were horrible photos. But this is not the first time we have seen such photos and videos. I think what made it very emotional was that the child appeared to be from a middle class family and thus most people could relate to it,” says Nancy, adding that being a mother of two young children she, too, could relate very much to what the father of the child could be going through.
But then, the humanitarian volunteer Nancy took over and she could think more pragmatically.
“We have to remember that there are people living in the camps. Weather is going to change in a couple of months. There are sand storms. I heard there were deaths in recent storms. There are people with allergies; children with asthma, it is worse,” says Nancy, sitting down on the couch beside the stack of donations in her living room.
A lot of this aid will be channelled through local charities in Qatar through ‘All for One’, the community service group formed by Nancy and her Qatari and expatriate friends recently.
“Through ‘All for One’, we connect people with charity organisations like Qatar Charity and Qatar Red Crescent and channel this stuff through their programmes for the distribution to orphans and refugees,” says Nancy.
She has also formed alliances with different UN organisations besides international organisations like Save the Children and others that have direct access to refugees. Some part of such donations goes through them. She keeps receipts of every donation made, even if the donors don’t ask for them.
“Every winter we hear stories that there were children, who froze to death. And that is tragic because it is something avoidable. Fortunately, some rich Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait have provided weatherised tents and prefabricated homes (for refugees),” says the volunteer who believes not only is it an Islamic duty but her duty as a human to help others.
A camp like Za’atri in Jordan is now one of the largest cities in Jordan and to cater to the needs of such large population, Nancy says, even the UN is having a hard time. She is, however, elated at the response she received from people in Qatar.
“There are so many people here, Qataris and expatriates, who are very sympathetic. Syria is not that far from here. The Syrian refugees have spread everywhere and everybody is affected. Everybody feels and senses it. There is a deep connection,” she elaborates.
People on different Facebook groups and others like the Pearl Ladies Network, a group of female residents of The Pearl, responded. “People now know where I live so they come and drop the bags. There came a point when (people at the) reception said they did not have storage for more bags,” says Nancy, smiling.
People even offered help in distributing the supplies as volunteers. At the same time, people would drop off bags of items in really good condition.
“I had a Qatari woman who dropped us some items that she sprayed perfume on. It smells so nice, clean and fresh. It follows the example of the wife of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Aisha, who said if you give charity, give the best that you have,” says Nancy, showing the brand new jackets for toddlers that were part of the donated stuff.
Since 2001, Nancy has worked with Palestinian, Afghan and other refugees, all through charity organisations as a volunteer. Locally, in her community, she has worked with organisations like ‘Muslims against Hunger’ where she along with others would cook food and give it to non-Muslim homeless people.
“Every culture is different but people who suffer have one thing in common that I have observed. It is faith. Sometimes, people who have less have more faith and hope. As an individual, I have learnt a lot from it,” she says, adding that it is also a reminder that the cards can always turn at any point.
There may be people in the world, who want to help others but most of them don’t know how. How to take the first step? Nancy believes it is very simple. You can benefit people in a huge way with the smallest things.
“From sitting in your living room, logging on to social media, you can raise awareness about an issue and motivate people. You can set up crowd-funding things and I have seen orphanages built up that way. There is always a way to do it,” she believes.
“These (refugee crises) are things for governments or big organisations like UN to take care of, and we are just a drop in the ocean. But if you can connect with just one family or an individual, that is tremendous,” explains Nancy.
Just like now, her community service group organised a mega fund-raising event, A Night for Nepal, to help victims of Nepal earthquake earlier this year through local charities. In fact, All for One was formed after the Nepal earthquake.
“As a group of friends, expats and Qataris, we realised we need to be organised in a way that we are able to manage whatever resources we offer to be able to constructively do something and to help local charities here to actually have a bigger impact,” she says to explain how the group came into being.
They planned and organised the event within just three weeks which, she says, is a record time to organise such a mega event in Qatar. They had 18 sponsors and getting even one big sponsor takes a lot of time.
“Nepalis living and working in Qatar have done some much to build this country. So we thought it was our chance to give back when their country was in need. And the response was great,” Nancy recalls with a smile.
