NEWS

I am Mahomedaly Amannullah Tameem, I am 23 years old and I am the president of M-Kids Organisation. I feel really privileged to represent M-Kids Organisation in The NGO of the Year Award 2021 in the “Asia's NGO/Social Service Awards” category. 

In 2016, M-Kids Organisation approached my school to talk about a project called "Gift Box for Syria", which involved collecting clothes, food and gifts locally (in Mauritius) to export to Syria with the help of other organizations. Being a social worker at heart, I joined the M-Kids organization. I got to know it better and became a member. After a year and a half, I applied for the position of board member because I knew the vision and mission of the organization and wanted to contribute.  

We have 4 main axes of intervention: 

·       Child Poverty Eradication 

·       Remedial Education 

·       Psycho-Social Support 

·       Youths for the Environment 

Several times a week, as part of the 'Share a Meal' program, M-Kids distributes hot meals to homeless and poor families. We place special emphasis on children whose parents are out of work or who are addicted to drugs. These children are our main beneficiaries.  

On Universal Children's Day, we conducted a workshop on the issues facing children in society, and what M-Kids does to help the vulnerable. 

We also focus on education, which is one of our priorities, and offer our beneficiaries after school support classes to prevent children from getting into trouble and dropping out of school. We also help university students with financial problems to find the means to have a good year of study. 

We were the first to organize creative and educational residential seminars for children in  grades 1-6, which was a new experience for them, as they had never visited a luxury villa or  a 5* hotel in their lives.  

At M-Kids, we also have a psychologist who follows the children and their families and provides them with daily support. It is also important for us to raise awareness about ecology and the environment. To this end, M-Kids organizes clean-up and waste collection days in various neighborhoods and plants trees with the children. M-Kids also offers emergency assistance, which consists of helping families to pay their rent,  their bills, to do some work in their house, to distribute food packs or vouchers, etc... We launch calls for solidarity in order to pay for expensive medication, as well as assistive equipment for the elderly or disabled. Every year, I organize lunches for seniors so that they do not feel isolated, outcast, and free medical checkups. 

However, M-Kids do not only help the residents of Camp Chapelon. Every year we send boxes of clothes and food to Rodrigues Island, and have even gone further to collect donations for the Rohingya. We went twice to the border of Bangladesh to help these people suffering from genocide and persecution by Burma. I also set up a medical camp there, which cost over 3 million Mauritian rupees. In addition, I have sent many containers of food and gifts to the children in Syria. Finally, I have not forgotten the children of India, to whom I have sent winter clothes, and the Somali children, containers of food products.  

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit our island paradise, my team and I did not lose hope. We were always on the ground to help people who were affected financially, or who found themselves without any support. We helped about 8000 people on the island. We do all this with a purely humanitarian aim, sympathy and empathy being two essential and primordial values in our society today.