Imtiaz Sooliman – Gift of the Givers turns 31
AI: Summary ©
The Foundation's disaster response agency has added several projects over the past 31 years, including emergency response, disaster response, and emergency response. The program is designed to help people achieve their dreams and goals, and is a commitment to hunger and deviation. The organization is working to support students with adversities and support them with a variety of initiatives, including creating a program for children to become independent, promoting human development, and supporting students with adversities to make sure they become independent. The speakers emphasize the need for everyone to work together to fix the country and promote goodness and building a positive society.
AI: Summary ©
The gift of the givers, Foundation has been helping 1000s of South
Africans in times of need disasters, along with people in
other parts of the world. The disaster relief organization
celebrates its 31st anniversary this year. Dr Suleman started out
with a feeding scheme from his home way back in 1992 now, the
foundation is the biggest disaster response India of African origin
on the continent. For more on this, we're joined by Dr Imtiaz
Suleiman himself, founder of gift of the givers. Dr Suleman,
appreciate your time today. Congratulations on a magnificent
31 years. Can you share with us the organization's journey on some
of those key milestones over the last 31 years?
Good afternoon. Thank you very much. We started off predominantly
as a disaster response agency over the period of time, starting off
with just orderly delivery of tents, blankets and medicines, and
then adding primary health care, medical teams, trauma teams,
trauma counselors, search and rescue teams, medical canine dogs,
upgrading hospitals in damaged areas, building schools, building
supporting agriculture, putting medical teams. So we did that over
a period of time, focusing predominantly on disaster
intervention, locally and internationally. But in a 31 year
history, we've added many more projects, boreholes, medical
intervention in hospitals. Infrastructure, wheelchair
distribution, counseling services, winter warmth, food parcels,
feeding schemes, sports development, toilets at schools.
Audiology program schools now they had optometry at schools. So it's
been a range of development taking place over that period of time. Be
the habitation, follow for animals, supporting farmers. It's
just a range of things that we've been doing over each passing tank.
We had more and more projects. And one of the strange that the
complicated ones is hostage negotiations, which we started
from 2014 it sounds pretty interesting. I'd certainly like to
hear a little bit about that. But Dr sudeman, for me, it's it's
always about, I think I caught a little bit of your story on what
was the inspiration to set up gift of the givers? Well,
it wasn't. It's not really my organization. You know, I didn't
get up one morning and say to myself, I think I'm a former
organization. Now, I met a spiritual teacher in Turkey in
Istanbul in 1991 and subsequently went back in August 92 and the
sixth of August, 92 coinciding with today, on a Thursday night,
at 10pm the spiritual teacher, after religious program looked at
me and looked heavenwards, looked at my eye and looked heavenwards.
At the same time and in flow and Turkish. And I don't speak a word
of Turkish, but that night, I understood every word that he
said, in Turkish. He said, My son,
it's I asked him that. I said, How's it possible that when you
speak Turkish, I understand, and when other people speak Turkish, I
don't understand? He said, My son, when the hearts connect and the
souls connect, the words become understandable. Everything about
that meeting was spiritual. The instruction was, I'm instructing
you to form an organization. The name will be in translated gift
from the givers. You will serve all people of all races, all
religions, all colors, all classes, all cultures, of any
geographical location and of any political affiliation, but you
will serve them unconditionally, expecting nothing in return, not
even a thank you. This is an instruction for you for the rest
of your life. It's a shortened version of exactly what happened
that night, but it was a direct spiritual instruction. And he
said, This is an instruction for the rest of your life, and you
will know what to do, and for 31 years, I do know what to do.
Amazing. I know you. You obviously had no doubt in your mind when,
when that word came to you. But how did it, how did it make you,
make you feel that you were the person that was that was chosen to
to do this work for for so many across the globe
at that point, you I didn't understand, you know, I just
thought it's talking about some kind of honorary work. I didn't
expect the magnitude of what it is now. But when I met him, on the
other side, I believed in the man, because I met him in 91 before and
fell in love with a man I don't even know, but it was a spiritual
connection, and I could feel there was something very special about
this man. And so when he told me that I don't really think much of
it, and I said, okay, it will develop in time, and something
will happen. You know, we do things here and there, but every
time I met him, he would say, it will get bigger. It will get
bigger. It will get bigger in the last few years, I now understand
what he meant. He also told me in initial stages that everything, I
won't understand everything, then I'll understand things as life
carries on and things unfold over a period of time. So, yes, it has
been an evolution, the prayer, the calling, whatever has been
instructed falls into place rather than what you're going to see the
next 10 years. Now, the organization is known for its
commitment to hunger and deviation. How do you manage to
distribute over 100, 100,000 food parcels annually and provide 1000s
of meals daily? Do.
Uh, we do much more than that. Now, you know you need it's it's a
TV the teams we have are committed teams, dedicated people. But of
course, we set soup kitchens have been set up by the communities.
We've seen how functional they are. And we support people doing
good work. And we had to escalate that support during covid itself,
when it was level five lockdown and so many people were hungry. So
yes, we've been doing food parcels for a long time. We've been soup
kitchens, but we escalated it during covid and during the
several unrest in KZN in 2021
and now food parcels and feeding has become a enormous standard
post disaster, whether it's fire, whether it's flood, because we
found that when we get to the disaster, the thing that's most
striking is not the fact that the house, but burn or damage, is the
fact that people are hungry, and we found hung is far more intense
now than two years previously, which means, and we already know,
that there's malnutrition, there's hungry. Anger is endemic in the
country. Throughout there was lots of lots of jobs, inflation. You
know, the cost of food transport as life is very, very difficult,
and so not only for poor people, we've seen, seen it happen in
middle class people, because they got a balance of paying their
bond, their cars, to school fees, the insurance, Medicaid and food
takes a knock, and we're finding that a lot of people have food
challenges in different classes in society. Now, water scarcity has
become an increasing concern due to climate change, and I know that
you have many water related projects that have been initiated
by a gift of the givers. Can you talk to us about some of these
clear states, various water projects started off in a big way,
but not in a big way. It started initially in 2015
were drought in the Northwest parts of KWA and it slowly
expanded. In 2017
when Sutherland was in crisis, and still is because of the drought,
we drilled 238 boreholes to benefit ship in that area. Then
came mat in 2019
we drilled 15 balls in the area, and a ball to drilling to place
throughout the Eastern Cape, to drill boreholes in the Northern
Cape, parts of Northwest parts of KZN, we put in a lot of boreholes.
Post floods of April, 2022
close to 50 boreholes in various parts of KZN. In wameka, following
day danger of days, you know, we put 45 balls in one city alone. So
it's an ongoing process in different hospitals. We selected
Rahima, Musa, Alan, Joseph, Kala Butterworth, Adelaide, Tawa
hospital, Beaufort, Abhinav Adelaide, Beaufort, and several
other hospital, SS Vida and many hospitals in Ace and Cape
Midlands, all requiring balls to because first of all, the crisis
of covid, then the drought, and then challenges with load
shedding. So we've put in balls predominantly, you know, in
hospitals and schools, and, of course, then in the community, and
for farming, farming community. Dr Suleman, I know that you're all
about empowering young people and promoting human development, which
are vital aspects of gift of the givers work. Can you highlight
some of the initiatives and programs the organization has in
place?
We've been supporting a lot of students with adversities over a
period of time to make sure you know that they become self
sufficient and independent. We also initiated a program at school
called jumpstart, where, over the years, unfortunately took a knock
during covid Because schools closed and we released. We
basically started a program where kids are given skills. They're
empowered. They come with an idea, a business idea. They get business
support in terms of a website, documents, a letterhead, a logo,
and they get encouraged how to make business on their own,
skilled LM, which they can take on late, late in the future. And some
kids are earning between 500,000 a month, and some are earning 20,000
and a month. So we had that program for kids in besides
business, we're encouraging development in terms of discipline
and sport. And several companies have now been offering us as to
turfs, which we've been putting in the schools. And one of the
principles I was working against with the behind three weeks ago
said that my kids used to sit in the corner and smoke. Now, no no
places. Second, they all on the school field, in fact, on the
sports field. And recently they won all the tournaments as a top
team, we did the same thing in that's Paterson high. We did the
same thing. So loudest pass and Desmond to school. And finally,
the kids excelling in sport, in discipline and human development.
And these are the kind of things we need to still upgrade in in a
school called TPA and Peter matters that there were kids were
170 170 kids with a learning disorder, and we went into the
school. My wife is a counseling psychologist. Together. What other
educational psychologists brought in a teacher with special
education needs, skills and supporting the teachers and the
school trying to upgrade and create an opportunity for those
kids. That's a prototype that we're still busy with, which one
to replicate in other schools. So there's a lot of programs going.
We got just too many projects. And, you know, we busy with catch
up surgery. We busy with helping with Catholics. So problem is, we
got too many different types of projects that require a lot of
time. But, you know, under the circumstances, you can't wait,
because the need is so great. No, you can't that. You speak about
your your wife, being a psychologist, I think you, I think
you mentioned now, one aspect of many of the situations that you,
that you're involved in, is the trauma associated with the with
the people in those situations that you support. So whether it's
war torn regions or places like Turkey, where there was that
massive earthquake and you were present assisting people. Just how
much trauma are people going through? And how do you lend a
hand to those individuals?
We have, we have our own Council division. We've got volunteer
psychologists, you know, that work with us and but over the years,
especially, besides trauma, there was a lot of trauma in Turkey, but
you know, the language is an issue. The government handles its
own own kind of cases with its own people, but our own teams offer
counseling when they come back, and wonderful sessions were done
with them, and some of them, of course, tweeted the workplace as a
standard procedure, counseling is offered to all all our team
members. Since the turkey earthquake, we've changed the
procedure for the next one, whether there will be pre charter
travel counseling, counseling during travel, counseling on site,
counseling after travel, because the turkey earthquake has affected
our people quite to a large extent, seeing the destruction and
seeing the suffering, emotional suffering, of people telling them,
please, can you come to my building? Can you come to my
building? My child is here. My wife is here. My seven family
members are here, and I score minus five degrees at night in
that weather, are standing outside hoping for health, desperation in
the ice. It has had an impact. The other impact, of course, is which
we haven't addressed as a country, is the effect of covid. There's
huge Fallout mental health, which has affected health care workers,
teachers, police people. You know, kids who lost their parents, lost
one or both parents, family members who lost a father, brother
or sister, and sometimes more than one, the family doctors watching
how they colleagues, passing on, we lost more than 1500 doctors,
more than 2000 teachers. And you know, business people having the
loss of business and jobs losses that has had a massive impact on
mental health in the country and as a country, we need to train
many more psychologists. We way behind in terms of the demo
psychologists that we have, and we need to deal not only with forward
the counseling things and what I mentioned in the disasters. What
about the fires? What about the floods and what about gender based
violence, and kids coming from broken homes. Kids have lots of
trauma at home. But you know, when it comes to school, it's just
impossible that you just order the teaching is going to solve the
problem. You need lots of counselors at school. It's one
industry or one profession that we start. Need to churn out hundreds
of psychologists as well as nurses and as well as doctors. It's all
job creation. It's it's job creation, providing social
services and emergent, urgent services for the country as a
whole.
Now being the single most significant humanitarian aid
organization in South Africa, how do you manage to raise funds and
garner support for the diverse projects that you undertake, both
locally and internationally?
That's not difficult at all, you know? The spiritual teacher said
you will never look for money as a policy. We don't have fundraisers.
Fundraising is not part of our policy. We just leave it. People
call us, you know, and we get called. We in a fortunate
position. Let me give the corporates a number. Tell them we
can't talk to you today. We can only talk to you the money because
there's so many people waiting in the queue. The public supports our
school, pensioners, ordinary people, business people,
professionals. You know we have and it's visible. You can see what
we mean, because people like your station and other media travel
with us. They come on site. It's visible. It's totally transparent.
You can see how your money is being spent, and of course,
recipients tell their family members work in corporate
companies. So often we get a call. I mean, this corporate company, my
granny call me, my auntie call me. You deliver the food parcel or
some school uniform or something. You have them in some rural part
of some part of the country. We're going to look at supporting you in
some way. And that's how the word spreads. Of course, social media
is big. Media coverage is big, but more than anything else, the
recipients themselves pass the message on to family members in
more affluent positions to say they've helped us. You need to
help them now before we let you go. Dr Suleiman, I know that you
are not celebrating these amazing 31 years, but what is the one word
that you would like to give the people of South Africa today?
This is the greatest country on Earth. No need to lose hope, no
need to have fear and say. People are leaving the country. More
hundreds of people are coming back into the country. We can build
this country. We need to do this together. A message to politics of
parties and the government, don't use slogans. Don't use phrases.
Get.
People apart, that turn people against each other, that brings
racist tendencies, you are not a patriot. If you do that, you will
destroy the fabric of society. Every responsible politician and
government and ordinary people and church and state and everybody. We
should be promoting goodness, good relations, building things
together and building a country. This is the greatest country on
Earth. We can fix it. It's not insurmountable, and let's stand
together, hold hands together, and do it together. Government,
corpus, public sector, religious, NGO, everybody. It's our country.
It doesn't belong to the government. It's my country, your
country, and 65 million people own this country. It's our country,
and we must build it together. Look after it. Dr, MJ sulaman,
founder, gift of the givers, we salute you sir, and
congratulations on those 31 years. So.