QC backs Al Rastan Bakery to aid displaced in Syria

Qatar Charity (QC) has announced that it has started supporting Al Rastan Bakery, in conjunction with its ‘Affected by Winter’ campaign, to secure the provision of bread on a daily basis to about 60,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Homs Governorate, Syria.
The project aims to provide basic food to those displaced to alleviate their suffering, QC has said in a statement.
Bread will be delivered to the “largest possible number of displaced people and affected families without any charge in order to lighten their financial and psychological burden, and reduce the spread of diseases resulting from malnutrition”, the statement noted.
Mohamed Wahi, director of QC’s regional office located in Turkey, said they seek to help Syrians at home with food.
The suffering of the population worsened due to the absence of basic food, medicine and clothing.
Now, Qatar Charity is working to provide bread free of charge daily to 11,021 families with 60,000 people, mostly women, children and the elderly, in the city of Rastan and its suburbs in Homs Governorate.
Wahi said in addition to securing flour, fuel, yeast, salt and other baking accessories, the project supports the monthly operating expenses of the bakery, supervises the daily production process and provides workers’ wages and the costs of transporting and distributing bread inside Syria, the statement added.
The total cost of running the bakery for two months in the first stage is about QR1.5mn.
He said IDPs have bread in adequate quantities, helping cover most of their basic needs for this essential item, stressing that the project has been “positively and significantly” reflected in the targeted areas within Syria.
Wahi thanked Qatari philanthropists for supporting QC campaigns for the relief of IDPs in Syria.
He also appreciated their gesture to provide aid to affected persons in order to meet their basic needs.
He appealed to such philanthropists to continue with their support.
The number of beneficiaries of the relief projects implemented by Qatar Charity has reached 16mn, including both displaced people and refugees within and outside Syria.
QC has implemented many humanitarian and relief projects for Syrian people at a cost of about QR545mn since the beginning of the crisis (in Syria) in April 2011.
Helping with bread is an important way of alleviating the suffering of families besieged in the city of Al Rastan, located in the northern countryside of Homs Governorate, Qatar Charity said.
The city’s residents have been living under the “suffocating siege” since the early days of the Syrian crisis, causing a “severe deterioration in the living conditions of a large segment of the population in the region”. This is because of the high rates of unemployment and interruption of supply routes in addition to increase in the prices of commodities controlled by crisis traders, which make it more difficult for the heads of households to secure the food needed for their families for the continuation of their
daily lives.