Imtiaz Sooliman – Click Africa EP5 Interview Dr Sooliman Gift of the Givers
AI: Summary ©
The Giving Giving Giving Foundation in Africa has created a mission to help every woman, regardless of demographics or demographics, to achieve a life well-lasting and a better life. The foundation has launched various projects to educate and empower people in Africa, including educational projects and social media activations. The success of the disaster response agency in Africa has been highlighted, and the importance of gifted people in the development of Africa, including education, agriculture, water projects, and counseling services is emphasized. The importance of learning from old values and values in Africa is emphasized, and the Giving Giving Foundation is designed to help children become entrepreneurs by providing them with a business support and a marketing magazine once a month. The program is designed to help children become entrepreneurs and expand their ideas, and invest in infrastructure and expand their own businesses.
AI: Summary ©
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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?