"Donors for the sake of God" .. the refuge of the homeless in Iraqi Kurdistan

Salah Hassan Baban - Sulaymaniyah

From one city to another between the plateaux and mountains of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, a volunteer team calling itself "Donors for the sake of God" is searching for beggars, the homeless, the mentally ill, people with special needs and the elderly to help them and provide them with psychological and health services.

Although there are homes for the elderly and orphans in the region, dozens of homeless people, the mentally ill and those with special needs spread the streets of cities, moving between their alleys and neighborhoods with thick hair, dirty bodies and torn clothes, without having a place designated to contain them and save them from being lost and homeless.

The "Donors for God" team started its activities years ago, but it expanded, increased and transformed from the narrow space to the wider by moving and searching among all the cities of the region for the displaced and those who need to provide services to them, after the search was limited to the city of Sulaymaniyah only.

Caring for the deprived
The team - headed by Othman Abdullah, a young Kurdish man from the outskirts of the city of Sulaymaniyah - gathers the homeless and other disadvantaged groups, shaves their heads and beards, trim their nails, and give them new clothes.

Horrific scenes and harsh and frightening facial details break the heart, showing the homeless in the streets and alleys of the region, with the possibility of transferring them to dangerous diseases because they carry in their clothes and bodies their germs, as well as the wounds that appear on their bodies without treating them.

Failure to give adequate care from the responsible authorities and human rights organizations in the region to these groups pushed the team members to launch this initiative to help them, especially the displaced from them, with their numbers increasing day after day, coinciding with the reception of Iraqi Kurdistan, thousands of internally and externally.

The "Donors for God" team aspires to expand the idea and transfer it to other Iraqi governorates to raise awareness among the community of the need to take care of the shattered segments, and give them their legitimate rights, including access to health and psychological services.

The volunteer team collects its needs and supplies of clothing and shaving materials from citizens' donations, but it does not yet have any place or headquarters of its own, and their shelter will be mosques when they travel to a far city or region.

The profession of team members is divided between arduous physical work and study, and their numbers increase day after day to reach dozens, as they move from one governorate to another throughout the week.

And Kolestan Saeed - Deputy Chairman of the Committee for Social Affairs and Defense of Human Rights in the Parliament of the Region - believes that what the "donors for God" do is somewhat related to religious and intellectual beliefs rather than institutional or organizational work, calling on the team to submit an application to the Iraqi Kurdistan Parliament to obtain To support, take advantage of their activities and expand them more.

Refused to appear
Rarely, "donors for the sake of God" appear to speak to the media about their activities, and describe what they are doing "voluntary charitable work for God."

The journalist and civil activist Hooker Kamal says that the initiative of this volunteer team confirms the high human value in Kurdish society, especially in light of the increasing numbers of the displaced and mentally disturbed day after day.

Kamal called on the concerned authorities in the region to allocate a center to collect these displaced persons, and to provide health, psychological and humanitarian services for them and those with special needs to save this category of psychological and physical damage to which they are exposed.