Daily Bread

“Volunteer work taught me to deal with people with humanity.” Mona Al Dahi

Mona is from Aden but when the war erupted in 2015 she decided to stay in Sana’a to finish her Master’s degree and keep going with her volunteer work. She heard nothing of her family in Aden for a month; all basic services had been cut off – water, electricity, communications. When she finally heard from her father he reassured her they were fine, and asked her if she was still volunteering. She told him she’d stopped as she had no energy due to worrying about her family, but he told her she must continue working to serve her country.

Mona then went back to volunteering work eagerly and actively, becoming engaged in relief work, helping people affected by armed clashes and air strikes, assisting displaced people who came to Sana’a from other areas of Yemen, providing them with clothing, food and shelter. Along with fellow volunteers, she worked hard trying to mitigate the humanitarian disaster created by the war.

One day, while she was on her way back from work, she saw from a distance the shadow of someone searching through bags of rubbish. He was an old man looking for something to eat. She was shaken. She decided to do something to feed these hungry people, who had been robbed by the war of their source of income.

Mona put the idea to members of her charitable organisation Li’ajlihim – meaning “For Them” in Arabic – whom she had been working with for years. After considering several options they decided to set up a bakery to provide free bread to families in need of food. Li’ajlihim Bakery was set up in December, 2015.

Mona took care to preserve the privacy and dignity of the beneficiaries and refused to photograph them while they were receiving aid, which meant they sacrificed substantial support from many charitable organisations. But she looked for donors and benefactors from inside and outside the country to fund her bakery.

Now, in the midst of the economic crisis in Yemen, Mona still works hard to ensure the bakery continues working. She directed members of her team to search for families in need of assistance, compiling a list of 300 addresses of poor families from various parts of Sana’a. These people still get their daily bread from Mona’s bakery.