Over the course of the past year 2021, the Needy Families Committee in Umm Al Quwain, affiliated with the Dar Al Ber Society, provided assistance and launched humanitarian and charitable initiatives, benefiting 4,695 humanitarian cases, at a total cost of 14,419,961 dirhams, distributed among 20 charitable causes.

Ali Hassan Al-Assi, Chairman of the Needy Families Committee at Dar Al Ber, stressed that the committee plays a vital and very important role in the local community in the Emirate of Umm Al Quwain and other emirates in the country, and its focus is on the weak and needy segments, such as families with limited income and financially insolvent patients, needy students, widows and orphans, people of determination and others.

‘Various Aid’
He explained that the payment of housing rent topped the category of life and livelihood, in which the committee helped the needy in Umm Al Quwain and other emirates, in terms of cost, which amounted to 2,388.509 dirhams, benefiting 244 families, and the payment of school fees ranked second, and focused in the interest of 346 non-citizen students. The financially needy, at a total cost of 2,130,230 dirhams, followed by sponsoring the university tuition fees for 98 students, of both genders, at a cost of 1,470,151 dirhams.

Ali Al-Assi added that the assistance directed to financially insolvent patients was by bearing the costs of their treatment and the purchase of medicines and medical devices for them. At a value of 44,3651,2 dirhams. Also paid was the construction of housing and the partial contribution to and maintenance of it, for the benefit of 52 low-income families, at a cost of 1,110,343 dirhams.

‘Revenues of goodness’
According to the head of the committee, the Ramadan distribution initiative, which provides foodstuff to people with limited income and fasting people, during the blessed month, ranked seventh among the charitable work of the committee last year, to a value of one million dirhams, and 1,600 cases benefited from it, followed by the payment of debts and receivables. The money owed by a segment of prisoners, at a total cost of 998,678 dirhams, for the benefit of 34 people and inmates in penal and correctional institutions, in addition to providing electrical appliances to 90 cases of those in need, with an estimated value of 743,606 dirhams.

‘A helping hand’
Al-Assi indicated that the list of the Needy Families committee’s aid and initiatives, in 2021, also included, respectively, according to its size and arrangement, the payment of electricity bills owed on old homes to needy families, fees for connecting electricity to new homes, and the provision of furniture to needy families. Aid was also allocated to people of determination, clothing for the Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha for children of poor families, distribution of vouchers that allow holders to purchase their needs of food and supplies, and aid directed to new converts to Islam, monthly food programs, and support for widows and orphans.