Manama: A campaign to collect used clothes and household items to support needy people in Somalia hit by the worst drought in 60 years has been launched by the Qatar Centrefor Voluntary Activities.
About 5,000 volunteers will join the campaign, the first of its kind to be organised by the centre, an official said.
"We have joined this humanitarian campaign considering the seriousness of the situation in Somalia," Yusuf Al Kadim, secretary general of the centre, said.
"We have decided to do it in a different way. We are not collecting money or food. We are encouraging people to donate new or used clothes and any other items that would be useful to the thousands of men, women and children who are severely hit by the drought in Somalia," he said, quoted by Qatari daily The Peninsula.
The centre has 7,700 volunteers from different nationalities and about 5,000 of them are ready to join the campaign, he said. Volunteer teams will visit houses in all the 29 constituencies of the Central Municipal Council to collect the goods.
Clothes, kitchenware, generators, tents are among the most useful items.
"We are urging all the people in Qatar, irrespective of their religion or nationality to support this campaign. People can either deliver the items to our office or we will send our volunteers to their residence to collect them when they inform us," Al Kadim said.
The collected items will be sorted at the Center and then handed over to the Doha office of the Islamic Dawah Organisation, a charity foundation that has its own offices in Somalia. "Our target is to collect as many items as possible because the situation in Somalia is gravely serious.
The campaign will continue for three months and we have plans to take up more such humanitarian projects in future," he said, quoted by the daily.
