Imtiaz Sooliman – In Depth Interview of The Gift of the Givers

Why would a doctor leave a successful career behind and go

into humanitarian work?

My father asked me the same question. He said, Are you sure

you're doing the right thing? Why did you study for seven years? You

know what's wrong with you? And then several years later, he said,

you know, what, if only I had half the faith that you had. You know

what? I felt much better that time. But I truly endorse totally

what you've done. It wasn't my decision. It was a spiritual

instruction from a spiritual, spiritual master in Istanbul, and

my heart said yes. It was something on the spur of the

moment. You know? It was just my heart said yes, and we have a

teaching. Listen to your heart. The heart says, Yes, you follow

it. And I have no regrets, because I've seen in medicine, I can see

maybe 3040, patients a day. And then, then to you can't be

properly so many patients in a day. And in this we can virtually

benefit, without exaggeration, millions of people at any one time

in different parts of the world, because the way we set up our

offices all over the world, amount of people we reach. So we actually

can serve 1000s of people in one day, which is far more beneficial

than seeing 40 patients in research. Follow me, these are

different warehouses. On the on the top is our offices. It's the

second office. The head office still is in town, but everything

runs from here. The whole all the staff have been moved here. Only a

small contingent is left at the head office building. Our system

is changing as all our offices now have warehouses, because that's

the best way to function. We go now to the first big warehouse,

where we call this warehouse is where we organize all the stuff,

where all the packing is done for the food parcels, the hygiene

packs, everything that comes is sorted out in this office in this

warehouse, and then taken to where it needs to be organized and sent

out. I'll just give you a brief look at the inside area of the

first warehouse. Our job is not to outdo government. We are not there

to make government look bad. Our job, from a spiritual point of

view, is to save people all religion tells you that that he

who saves one man, one person, saved all of mankind. And by God's

own definition, you saved mankind 1000s of times over, because, by

His grace, He has permitted us to serve his own people.

You

so this is food items and rice, other containers left few days

ago. Already, six containers have been sent last year for Yemen and

Somalia. We sent out 101 containers of food aid. In fact.

Now to save cost, all the rice is bought in India. Instead of

bringing it back to South Africa and bang it and take it back out

to Somalia and to Yemen, we just buy the rice in India, and from

India, it's dispatched directly to Yemen and to Somalia. It's a major

cost saving, and that money can then be used to benefit more

people. When my team's got I must give compliments to my staff and

my teams and my project managers and research industry teams and

the medical teams and everybody work with us. When did I the last

few missions? I stopped coming. I normally did the teams. I've

stopped doing that because I'm not going to live forever. It's time

you people start learning to carry on the process. And when they go

across, they ask me, What must we do? I tell them one line, what

will you do if your wife and child are in trouble? What will you do

if you know what to do, then you know what to do now. And I leave

that to them, and they work with absolute position, and they love

to save people's lives, and they do everything necessary to look

after what I said in the beginning that the dignity of people and to

serve them with love, kindness, compassion and mercy, and that's

what I need to

do here.

These items are leaving for India soon, these oxygen concentrators,

as you know, India's biggest problem is two. One is they don't

have oxygen and two, they don't have oxygen delivery machines. You

often say, we do things straight. What does that mean?

Everything has to be transparent. That's why, you know there's no

la, there's no and in India to say, latas, there's no latas job.

Everything is done properly, because you're not dealing with

some inanimate object. You're dealing with human life, human

suffering, human dignity and human emotions. They can't be expired

medicines. They can't be blown up tenfold, things that the teachings

tell you, what you yourself will not use. You can't give to

somebody else. You can't give torn clothes. You can't give slapdash

treatment. You can't throw things at people like they don't care,

they don't matter, like they have no feeling. So when we do things,

we do it properly. Everything. When we cook for water, we make

sure the hydrologists are there, the lab tests are done. What is

drinkable? We drink that water first before we give it to

everybody. And that's why the media traveled us. Where will we

go? We want the world to see that we are being watched, that in

everything that we do, we are being watched. And you can see

what we're doing so you can see it's transparent. There's no

second and job here. There's no.