Dubai: Families living in Tamweel Tower in Dubai’s Jumeirah Lakes Towers presented “Ramadan care bags” to more than 400 labourers at a nearby construction site on Saturday.
Around 15 children and 30 adults, all residents of Tamweel, had got together days ago to make bags from old T-shirts, in which they placed items such as water, juice, milk, dates, and non-perishable foodstuff. All the items were donated by Tamweel residents.
Tamweel families are a close-knit group as they moved back in together at around the same time (last August) after a huge fire had partly gutted their building in 2012, said Sheetal Sureen, a UK expat who lives in the 34-storey tower.
Sureen said many of the families involved in their Ramadan care bags community initiative were fasting.
“We all wanted to come together in the spirit of Ramadan to be generous and kind to people. I came up with the idea of Ramadan care bags and a lady named Renuka Krishnan said we can use old T-shirts as bags. She taught the children how to cut and sew the shirts into bags. We didn’t have enough donations of old t-shirts to make all the bags so we did end up buying some paper bags,” Sureen said.
“So many of our fasting mums and children came together to pack the bags. On Saturday morning, we walked to the construction site near our cluster and handed over the Ramadan care bags to the workers during their break, after taking all approvals. They and we were smiling ear to ear; everyone was very happy.”
This was the first time the Tamweel families had done something like this and they plan to do a similar community drive for Eid Al Fitr, the festival marking the end of Ramadan, and continue the initiative every year, Sureen said.
