Damaan Kitchens
In response to the rising needs, and to reduce costs as well as to encounter hunger, starvation and malnutrition in the besieged Eastern-Ghouta, Damaan Humanitarian Organization has opened two kitchens; one of which is industrial, to assist the besieged and internally displaced persons in the area.With a capacity of 4,000 meals per day, our two kitchens have served hundreds of thousands of meals to girls, boys, women and families in Eastern-Ghouta. In our project, we pool together the expertise of professional chefs, and hospitality workers in addition to representatives of the Medical and Local Counsels.
Damaan Food packages: Food Assistance NOT Food Aid
In addition to its efforts through Damaan Kitchens, our organization, and in collaboration with local councils, has been actively involved in relief and emergency response through providing food packages. In line with the World Food Programme standpoint, Damaan Humanitarian Organization applies the concept of food assistance not food aid. Food Aid sprang from a largely unidirectional, top-down vision: people were hungry; we fed them. Food assistance, by contrast, involves a more complex understanding of people’s long-term nutritional needs and of the diverse approaches required to meet them.This shift is about recognizing that hunger does not occur in a vacuum. It means we must concentrate time, resources and efforts on the most vulnerable in society. It implies not just emergency interventions, but tailored, multi-year support programmes designed to lift nutritional indicators. We balance the urgency to alleviate hunger here and now with the broader objective of ending hunger once and for all.
Food assistance thus becomes part of a policy mix that advances social wellbeing in general. In line with the Sustainable Development Goals , and in particular with Goal 2 , we consider the quality as well as the quantity of food, with the emphasis on its nutritious character and seasonality. Crucially, food assistance enlists beneficiaries as actors: it gives them a voice, and, wherever possible, a choice in what food they receive and how they receive it.
