Imtiaz Sooliman – Click Africa EP5 Interview Dr Sooliman Gift of the Givers

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Hello Africa, and welcome to this exclusive episode here on click

Africa. I'm Josie mahachi, and today I'm excited to be speaking

to the founder and chairman of the gift of the givers foundation here

in South Africa. Dr Imtiaz Suleiman, how are you, sir? Fine.

Thank you very much. Thank you so much for granting click Africa

this opportunity to speak to you. Understand you're a busy man. It's

a pleasure anything for Africa and its message that we want all

Africans to hear about and to know about. Tell me who is intersuman.

Well, I'm a medical doctor. I regard myself as a very ordinary

person. I met a spiritual teacher who said that whatever you do in

life is done through you and not by you. So I regard myself as a

person committed to the service of a creator, you know, and allow my

energy to flow through me to serve people. I like to say I'm just

there and nobody else. Wow, what really came through your mind when

you study this foundation, actually, again, it's not I

started it. I was in Istanbul in Turkey in 1991

where I met the spiritual teacher who said, You know what my soul

looks like. I'm a person that likes to help somebody. The

following year, in 92 I met him again, and he told me. He didn't

ask me. He instructed me. He said, I'm not asking you, I'm telling

you to form an organization. The name will be gift of the givers.

You will benefit all of mankind, unconditionally, of all races, of

all religions, of all colors, of all classes, of all political

affiliations and of all geographical areas. You will not

discriminate between different religions. You will help

unconditionally and you will help but love. What compassion, what

kindness, what dignity. Don't expect to get a thank you, and

don't expect anything in return. Expect, in fact, to get a kick up

your back if you don't get that, regard that as a bonus. And he

said, Now go home to South Africa. Focus on Africa, because that

continent needs you the most. And remember that this is the mission

for you for the rest of your life. And that's how it started. So it's

not something I started. I was instructed. So did you have

capital at that moment. No, I mean, I don't know how serious the

gentleman was. You know, I thought he was just talking about

something that will happen once in a while. I was a medical doctor,

sixth year in practice, in all private practice in Peter

marisburg, you know, my hometown when I live now. And I thought

maybe a project once in a while will come. And I kept on going to

Turkey. I met him 16 times, and every time he said, this thing

will get big. It will get very big. It will get very big. He kept

on saying that, and I still didn't know what he was talking about.

Because initially we did one project, two projects a year, then

maybe another project, only, disasters at that stage, nothing

else. And then eventually we started adding on other projects.

And then after he passed on, actually, 21st February, 1999

tomorrow is exactly the day. Is the 13th year you know that he

passed on, right? And he so when he passed on, his worth was

stronger than when he was alive. So we're celebrating his life.

He's celebrating his life and his instruction. Wow, that's great.

All right. Gift of the givers is known to be the biggest or the

greatest disaster rescue mission here in Africa. Some people might

not know what is gift of the givers foundation all about. We

started off as a disaster response agency. Immediately after that

second meeting with the teacher on the sixth of August, 1992 we're 20

years old this year. We celebrate 20 years on the sixth of August 92

and at that stage, immediately after he instructed me, our first

response was, was to the crisis in Europe, in Bosnia, the civil war

in August, we responded with 30.

They came up with the concept of the emphasis must be on primary

health care. And to respond to that, we built clinics in

containers, primary health care units. Again, that's a world

first. The hospital was the world first. The clinics were a world

first. And that became our next project. And in time, we started

adding on several other projects to educate Africa. Money has to be

spent on education in primary and secondary level and on tertiary

level. So we started supporting schools educational projects,

helping with stationery, what books, what meals, what uniforms,

what labs, what libraries, what sports equipment. And we do that

on an ongoing basis, and we put a lot of food into schools, because

lots of kids are hungry in our schools. Then we came to tertiary

education. We started off in 97 just giving 20,000 Rand in

bursaries this year and last well, in 2011 that figure reached to 6

million, no, almost four to 500 students a year benefit from

education and our our bursaries. But what's very interesting is

when a parent writes to you, or a business discipline writes you

after four or five years. Thank you very much. You may not

remember me. I got a job. I'm earning this and last week or two

weeks ago, a lady who moved to Australia sent us 19,000 Rand to

say, please contribute to somebody else. So it that is the best form

of empowerment, of interpretation and self sufficiency, and when a

person can earn for himself, that's the greatest form of self

esteem. So that's bursaries, the other thing and education, we also

do agriculture, water projects, boreholes, ambulance services,

medical support, supporting institutions. What orphans, old

age people, you know, elderly people, people who are in homes,

children abuse, women abuse, physically and mentally challenged

institutions like the Adelaide town was full for the physically

challenged. In Soweto, it's one of the big units. We support. A

hospital in Cape Town, where there are children who have been

abandoned, who need rehabilitation, the Sara Fox

hospital we support, or support that, putting equipment in certain

hospitals, putting medical supplies. We do that where, you

know, food parcels, feeding schemes,

entrepreneurship in terms of weed, making it technology to computer

software, how we can help people market themselves and brand

themselves, sports programs and counseling services and life

skills, those are all different things that we do 24 different

types of projects, including wheelchair distribution also and

also bring people of different faiths together and intercultural,

interfaith kind of relationships. Yeah, I understand. Besides the

disaster rescues, you also discover the rest of Africa into

giving aid, food, blankets, winter warmth and stuff like that. How,

what measures do you put in place to discover where exactly you're

needed? Well, we follow you guys. Then the media comes with the

story, you know what? And, for example, when Niger was brought to

the to the forefront, it was to the media to say, You know what,

this malnutrition. Children are dying of hunger in Niger. The same

thing happened with Somalia. And as we pick up the pictures, you

know, and we get the information, we try to assess how critical it

is who's responding? How viable it is, and we put a plan together.

First of our 20 year history, we've responded to 32 different

countries, including South Africa, and we spent just over 600 million

Rand.

Wow, I'm sure your donors are so grateful to hear you say that. And

where are you getting your donors from? Is it just from Africa or

also from Europe.

Our donors are predominantly South African, and they're predominantly

ordinary people. We don't go to corporates, we don't go we don't

phone people. We don't make proposals. We don't go door to

door. We don't canvass. We just announce our projects. And people

come in droves to our warehouses, to our offices. They line up in

the 1000s to bring money and goods to us, because we build that kind

of reputation in time. Yes, we haven't asked. But the last

project for Somalia and one or two other projects, we started seeing

money from Australia, from Switzerland, from the UK, from

America, not big money. But yes, it's a beginning. And some places

of Malawi, Botswana, Swaziland, even Zimbabwe, Mauritius. Money

has been coming through. It's not in a big way yet, because all of

Africa still don't know who we are, but everybody in South Africa

knows who we are.

I would like to take this opportunity on click Africa to

talk about a project that you've just started. It's a big project

for Africa by Africans. I'm talking of can you tell us about

that? Again? Remember the spiritual teacher said that things

are done through you and not by you. It was in Malawi on the

morning of 16th April, 2004

It was a Friday morning. I had gone to look, strangely enough, at

fertilizer and seeds, how we could support, you know, smallholder

farmers. And whilst I went to see that factory, I realized, by the

way, because I got a smell of food in one of the of the sections and

I went there, said, but you guys never told me, you know, food

manufacturing facility. They said, that's what we do. We're one of

the first companies.

That excluded soya. Many years ago, when the Mozambique and

refugees were coming into Malawi during the RENAMO Flama war, we

got a seven year contract from the World Food Program to produce a

corn soya mix to give these people. And that was in on

Wednesday, Thursday. And just before that, I had read a report

before I left South Africa in February, 2004

saying that Africa's biggest problem is low protein, protein,

iron deficiency, folic acid deficiency, lack of zinc. And you

know, these are the conditions and lack of iron that causes problems

with kids. And that Friday morning, by Thursday night, when I

went to sleep, I said, God, we need a formula. And Friday morning

I got up, got a formula in my head. And I have to say it's

divinely guided, because we didn't do much nutrition in medical

school. You don't do as much as you do as a dietitian. And to be

honest with you, I didn't go for all the lectures. So to be get up

on a morning and what a formula that's almost perfect. It's a

world first a combination of ground nuts that's produced in

Malawi, one of the best ground nuts in the world, but groundnuts

have the problem of aflatoxin, but because the same company had lots

of experience with groundnuts, how you pick them, how you blanch

them, and how you roast them, teaches you how to kill aflatoxin.

And every test we do in aflatoxin is within the accepted requirement

worldwide on aflatoxin level. And then we said, we need to mix it

with another product, but we can't use milk because milk has lactose,

and lactose in Africa causes severe problems. So we went for

soya. The problem with soya is, on its own, doesn't have a very nice

taste. So we combined the ground nuts with soya, put in vanilla to

give it flavoring, and then we said, Let's go one stage further,

because like in Mozambique, in the floods or any other disasters, you

cannot take a stove and a 10 kg rice and a gallon of oil and some

other product in the middle of water. How do you cook all this?

So you need something that's instant to eat. So Cebu system

became that product where it requires no water to mix, no

cooking, no heating. Ready to eat, no refrigerator. Ready to eat.

Simple season ready food supplement. You open the bottle

and you eat. The power of it is that one teaspoon is energy dense,

meaning that there's more energy and power in that one spoon than

almost a whole plate of food. And it's preservative free, and it's

got all essential amino acids, fatty acids, calcium, magnesium,

phosphorus, zinc, you know, vitamin A, D and K, calcium, all

the other requirements that's required for a healthy diet. And

we've used it in HIV, in TB, in AIDS, in cancers, in whole range

of conditions. It's not a cure, it's a supplement, but people

swear by it. You know that it makes a big difference to those

who take it. So what measures are you putting into place to take it

to the rest of Africa? Well, again, we depended on media,

because if you market a product like that, it becomes too

expensive. People try to copy the product, and you can get the

product at probably less than half the price. But you get a product,

and you get a product, you know, we went for the world's best

ground nuts from Malawi. We went for the world's best soya from

South America and America. We went for that worth, a great pre mix

from India that a company that makes pre mix for the World Food

Program in United Nations. We took organic sugar from Malawi, soya

oil from Kenya. You know, since the combination of ingredients,

you add up all the transport cost and what's gone into the research,

the product is very expensive, but the markup is very minimal,

because we need to get it to a population that cannot afford it.

The irony with Sybil sisu is it's a quality product, but it's not

affordable by the people who need it most, and that's why we need

governments buying international NGOs, foundations trust to make it

available to those who need it most. And we try to give up as

many as we can from our own budgets. You said, we must give a

message to Africans. I want Africans to understand what people

think about them. A few years ago, once I was in Malawi, I met a

Malawi ambassador who was an ambassador to the United Nations

many years ago, and while she was sitting in the airport together,

he said, my friend, I'd like to thank you for helping my country,

because we have an office there. But then he went to ought to tell

you something very interesting. He said, You know, many years ago,

there was a conference in Europe, myself and a few other African

diplomats, not many of us in that at that time went to the

conference in Europe. And he said this conference went on for three

days. And he said, After three days, we all African delegates

realized that the word Africa or an African country was not

mentioned once in all three days. So he said to himself, they said,

You know what? Why is this Europe, America, other countries, you

know, Asia, were mentioned, but not Africa. We said, Look, we felt

shy because we were not many, but on the last night of the of the

conference, when they had the grand dinner, we summed up a

little bit of courage, and we went to the convener of the conference,

and we said, My dear friend, can you please explain to us why

nobody in this conference discussed Africa?

Or an African country, or even mentioned it once, he said, Do you

know what the man told me? He said, Africa is irrelevant. What?

So if you want to make Africa relevant to all Africans, you have

to do it yourselves. We're not going to step up and hold each

other's hands. Nobody is going to support you if you don't believe

in yourself, don't expect anybody else to believe in you. And

another story, in 2005

we went to Pakistan to respond to the earthquake. And when we go

from South Africa, we take mixed teams of all races and all

religions and all colors, and these are all volunteers. That's

one thing I also want you to emphasize all every person that

works for we have, yes, we have fixed paid personnel who you know,

who are like robots, who know exactly what to do. But when you

go overseas, the personnel who come are all volunteers. They may

be in private practice, earning up to 20 or 30,000 Rand a day, and

they would close that practice for 10 or 12 days and come but no

money given to them. They will do it just to help and highly skilled

personnel. But these are the kind of personnel I went with to

Pakistan

when I got there. You know, when you say the Chinese, you know,

they all look the same. They only come from one country. They come

from India. They all look the same. The Europeans all look the

same. But when you come from South Africa, it's very confusing,

because you see a white Afrikaner, a white Englishman, a black Zulu

man, a black Kozak man, Indian Hindu, an Indian Muslim. It's all

very mixed up. And when you go there, when we got there, there's

one guy came from a European organization. He said, Where are

you from? I said, from Africa. From South Africa. He said, Oh,

you're from Africa. What did you come to fetch from here? Because

you Africans are always looking for free things. Wow. So I said,

my friend, we didn't come to fetch anything. We brought we brought a

medical team to help and let me give you some news, I told him. I

said, Do you know the military of Pakistan just handed over a

hospital to gift of the givers. We're the only team in the whole

world that was granted a hospital that the government trusted us, a

hospital that was closing down. We converted in 24 hours to our 400

bed emergency hospital, theaters, X ray machine, medical teams,

beds, detergents, linen, brought in nursing teams from all over and

put the doctors to work doing 75 operations a day. We made history

in that hospital, to the point that in 2006

the Pakistan president gave us an award as the only organization on

the African continent that diverse that deserves recognition from

Pakistan for the 1000s of lives that we saved. We went in with the

most advanced medical team in the world, neurosurgeons, general

surgeons, orthopedic surgeons, any status you know, physiotherapists,

spinal rehab specialists. And for five months, we supported it to

the point that when the teams left, everybody in Pakistan cried

for us. And we are from Africa, nowhere else. We were African, and

we did it proudly African on the same way when I mentioned Haiti,

when we went across to Haiti, Believe in yourselves, telling the

Africans, Believe in yourselves. When we went to Haiti, the

European, the American and the French teams came, and they said,

We cannot work here. Everything. There's no theater, there's no

functional equipment. How can anybody work here? So we said,

what do you expect? It's an earthquake. Everything is

destroyed, and Haiti was one of the poor countries in the world.

So what do you expect in terms of technology standards? The South

African team went forward. They said, Leave this to us. We do it

with gut feel. And they got to work immediately. When there was

no drill, they took a Black and Decker drill, and they started

operating when the screws were too long. They hacked, shot it and

used it inside when there was no material. And slings for weight.

For orthopedics. They took material from the houses, cut it

and put it when there was no proper orthopedic weights. They

took rocks from the ground and said, this is half kg. This is one

kg. And they start adapting and make do to make things work. To

the credit of the American and French and European teams, they

said to the people of Haiti, if you want help, if you want to

survive, if you want to live, then go to the Dream Team. And the

Dream Team is from South Africa. Wow. So then, if this is the

mentality out there, that Africa is irrelevant in Africans,

whenever they go somewhere, they are going to take things for free,

what measures, what advice can you give to the rest of Africa today?

Prove it to us we have our own dignity. You know, an old lady

pensioner will look after 10 people in one family. She will

bone beg. She has sacrificed and she look after 10 children and

done throughout Africa, learn from the values of the old people,

where the spirit of nurturing, of teaching, spirituality, of moral

values, our youth need to remember that. They need to remember where

we came from, where our parents came from, and we have to have

respect and dignity. And most important of all, we as an as a

continent, we have faith in the Almighty. We have that kind of

faith. Doesn't matter what religion you belong to as.

Have faith in Almighty. He will show you the way, and he will open

the door for you. You got to believe that, and we need to do

everything possible, to study, to tell the land to help each other,

not to waste, not to be caught up on the consumer life of other

nations, not to waste money on irrelevant games and cards and all

those kind of things Focus on buying and implement. And let's

start working with each other, if we can help Africa. Yes, we want

to take this, this idea, to every continent. Maybe later on, we will

take medical teams from other countries to join us, take media

from other countries to join us, and let's work as one united

Africa to develop each other. All right, you're also contributing to

the employment industry. I understand a whole lot of people

working under gift of givers foundation. When we started off in

1992

we had only one staff, all right up to 2003 only one staff. And

then the government gave us a parcel, a food parcel program to

roll out in South Africa. I designed the program for

government, and they came to me and said, Look, we want you to

roll it out. And they gave me 60 million Rand to roll out the food

parcel program. And it's then when I needed to put in more managers,

more we are staff, more laborers, and I didn't have the heart to put

them off after this project was over. And as time went on, we

started expanding. And now from one, we have 50 full time staff

for 24 different projects. But in addition to that, because of the

busses and scholarships, so many people have got jobs. They are

managers, they are doctors, they are dentists. They've created

employment for so many other people because we funded them, and

then because of our agricultural supporting of feeds, seeds and

fertilizer, people now got their own farms. They're growing their

own crops, their own crops, their own vegetables, which they're

selling, and they're becoming self sufficient. We've given out sewing

machines. We've given up different types of equipment to different

people, but we've come up with something very novel, something

very new, and we found all the people don't understand technology

too much. So we came up with a program called jumpstart,

jumpstart an entrepreneur program, where we take children in. I don't

know what they call it other parts of Africa, we used to call it

standard eight. Now we call it grade 10. Maybe other countries

call it different names, but grade 10 or standard eight, we went to

them, we said, come with a business idea. And we went to

different schools and 100. And we selected 148 kids for the program.

And they came with different ideas. An African child designed a

solar battery. It came with a formula, and in front of us it

worked, and it showed you, said, the townships, domestic people

need a cheap solar battery. Here's the model, and he came with it,

and he's instead of eight. And yet, some people still think

Africa is irrelevant. Yes. And so we came with a product, and we

said, If you cover the business plan. We will give you a website,

a five page website, access to email, to Facebook, to Twitter.

We'll give you a marketing magazine once a month, all on

email. We'll teach you know how. We'll give you business support,

and we'll host you for one year. We'll give you your own logo, your

own letter here, your own invoice, and like this, you can start

business. And we'll give you a business support idea. And we've

got a whole business. You put unit supporting it. And this 148 kids

came with ideas already in December, one of those group, two

kids alone, made 15,000 and profit from the idea. So we are now

looking at expanding this idea beyond school. We investing. We

invested 2 million last year. We invested another 3 million this

year. What is program to help it expand, to make kids become

entrepreneurs and and look at the beauty of this program. Normally,

the child doesn't listen to other mother or the father says he's too

busy with his computer or his games. Now, if he has a mother,

say, doing bead making or doing some kind of painting at home, and

says, My son, how can I get this message to other people about my

bead baking, or my cake bakes baking, or in my dresses. How do I

get it? Now the Son has his computer program. He loves

computers. He takes the mother's bead making address, he puts it on

computer and makes it accessible the whole world. So mother and

child now work together. You bring family harmony, you bring unity,

you bring discipline the home, you bring spirituality, and you bring

business and faith in Almighty. What could be a better program

than that? This has been a place in church, but any last words to

Africa today, Africa again, emphasize they have to believe in

ourselves. We need to study. We need to make progress. We need to

go back to agriculture. We need to learn to trade with each other on

African continent. We need to be supportive, to have the spirit of

Ubuntu, to show love and kindness to each other. We need to embrace

ourselves across the different clans and the different tribes and

the different religions. The moment we do that and work

together as one continent, as one nation, we will transform this

nation in a very short space of time. But I give assurance that

Africa's time has come where we will see prosperity among our

people, and it's not too far away. Thank you so much, and it's been a

pleasant chat. But in case, some people would want to be part of

this jump start, or some people would want to send in the

donations, how can they do so? It's the best because in Africa,

the best thing would be to visit our website, www. Dot, gift of the

givers.

Dot org as one word, or send us an email on info at gift of the

givers.org, all one word. Thank you very much. Thank you so much,

doctor, so much pleasure. There you go, Africa. I've been speaking

to the founder of the gift of the givers foundation here in Peter

marisburg, South Africa. Sending those emails to click

[email protected]

you'll be seeing more of the gift of the givers, Foundation projects

here on click Africa, because when you click into Africa, this is

what you see. I'm Josie mahachi signing out.

Arise from

your speak Africa,

rise from your should, we will be

free. So long,

so long.

Long,

so

long. We've been fooling around for

too

long. We've been seated down

for so long, so long.

Remember,

remember one long time ago when we used to live like Prince and

Princess. Remember?

Remember the fear of be the pigeons,

when we used to live like dreams and

Princess, remember?

Remember Martin Luther King?