From Getting Food Assistance to Leading Food Distributions: Ahmad’s Success Story

 

Meet Ahmad, Executive Assistant at ICNA Relief Arizona. Ahmad knows what it’s like to really need help from an agency like ICNA, a United Food Bank partner agency. His journey with the organization began with him standing in line to get food at their warehouse in Tempe. At the beginning of 2022, Ahmad migrated to Arizona from Afghanistan. “I was staying with a lot of other refugees at a hotel nearby. ICNA was helping us to get food and teach us English so we could get jobs and start our lives here. I really appreciated the help so I began to volunteer here during the food distributions to give back. Salina (Director of ICNA Relief Arizona) saw me so often that she asked ‘why don’t you work here?’”

 

So that’s exactly what Ahmad did. Salina offered him the job of administrative assistant and he hasn’t looked back. “It’s been a really hard transition, being alone in a new country. But what I do here helps me know I am not alone.” 

 

 

ICNA Relief is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, “a humanitarian organization dedicated to serving communities in need through various social and disaster relief programs.” ICNA Relief offers disaster relief, transitional housing, hunger prevention, refugee services, student success services and Muslim family services. Although they are a muslim-led organization, ICNA Relief sees it as their duty to provide aid and assistance to all people who need it regardless of their religion or other identities. 

 

 

ICNA Relief’s Arizona Chapter, located in Tempe, is led by Director, Salina Imam. ICNA Relief Arizona became a partner agency of United Food Bank in January 2021, when they wanted to expand their food distribution programs during the pandemic. They now host 14 monthly food distributions at eight locations across the state, where they also offer free health screenings for people who want one. “All of the programs we do are to support our community. Even though we are a muslim run organization, only about a third of the people we help are muslim. Anyone is welcome here,” shared Salina. 

 

Ahmad’s work goes beyond supporting Salina, ICNA Relief’s mission and back-end organizational management. He is heavily involved in the food distributions and helps put on the 14 monthly events. He has a deep sense of care and empathy for his community and believes that food assistance should be more thoughtful than it is traditionally seen as. When he was receiving food he always appreciated when he had the ability to cook with ingredients he had in Afghanistan. Ahmad saw the value in providing culturally relevant foods to neighbors receiving food assistance and so he led ICNA’s effort to start organizing bags with foods that are more relevant for different religious groups and ethnicities.

 

“I think it’s really important to give people things they know how to cook with and things that they can eat. Muslims, for example, don’t eat Pork. We make sure to provide them with another protein if pork were the main option that day. We have bags specifically for Hispanic/Mexican people. When we get things donated like masa or certain spices like chiles, we make sure to reserve them for those people because we know they’ll use and appreciate it.” 

 

United Food Bank supports ICNA Relief Arizona’s food distributions by delivering Emergency Food Bags (TEFAP), fresh produce and other goods to their small, but mighty warehouse.  “When I first started volunteering in 2022, we were serving about 49-50 families at our Sunday distributions at our warehouse [in Tempe]. By the middle of the year, we had to ask United Food Bank for more TEFAP allowance because there were almost 100 families coming every week. That’s about how many people come to our Sunday distributions now,” explained Ahmad.

 

 

Salina shared some insight into why she thinks ICNA, and other food distributions are seeing higher rates of neighbors reaching out for food assistance; “After the pandemic, we really saw things slow down. We had stopped seeing as many people need food during our weekly distributions. But this year we have opened our doors to more people than maybe ever. With inflation, people losing jobs, people not willing to work, rent prices and all of these things, people are in a position where they really need help again.”

 

Ahmad wanted to share a special message to the donors that support United Food Bank and their ability to provide food to ICNA to distribute to their community. He said, “I would like to thank all of the donors who support us. We cannot do this without the support of you guys. Thank you.”

 

Salina shared that “We [ICNA Relief Arizona] are so grateful for United Food Bank. Everything that is done here is “us.” There is no ‘we.’”  You can support ICNA Relief by donating to United Food Bank. For every dollar you donate, United Food Bank can help provide 5 meals to our partner agencies to distribute to people experiencing food insecurity. Join us in the efforts to help feed Arizonans in need. 

 

 

Written by Sarah Bathe