Aiding earthquake victims
In response to the catastrophic earthquake Saturday in Pakistan,
Burbank-based Islamic Relief USA teamed up with another charity to
send $1.6 million worth of medical emergency kits to the affected
areas Tuesday.
Islamic Relief, which has 10 established clinics and three offices
in Pakistan, teamed with Americares, a disaster-relief agency founded
in 1983, to ship World Health Organization-approved emergency medical
kits out of Americares’ Amsterdam facility.
Islamic relief hopes to send a total of $4 million in relief items
to Pakistan in the coming months, spokesman Arif Shaikh said. “We’ve
already started working,” Shaikh said. “We already distributed aid to
the victims and we have a $10 million appeal for funds to donate all
over the world and $4 million has been allocated for projects in
Pakistan.”
Islamic Relief’s Burbank headquarters has a staff of about 25
people.
“We’ve been asking for phone donations since Saturday,” Shaikh
said. “We also have collections set up in mosques.”
Once enough aid is collected, the organization will send
volunteers to Pakistan, which is estimated to have 20,000 to 30,000
dead and many injured and homeless.
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