Friday, August 12, 2011
A Halifax man is fighting the famine raging in East Africa with the help of his firefighter colleagues.
Ryan Taplin/Metro
Firefighter Ali Duale, right, gives Mia Kirby information about charities that are providing relief in famine-stricken East Africa on Thursday. |
Over the last two weeks, Ali Duale has collected more than $15,000 in donations for relief aid to famine-stricken areas of Africa including Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia.
His colleagues at Halifax Professional Firefighters joined him in downtown Halifax on Thursday, encouraging people to donate while the federal government is promising to match donations.
As a former resident of Somalia, Duale knows first-hand the severity of the drought. “I was in a refugee camp in Kenya and they’re not different from one another,” said Duale, who has two siblings in Dadaab, Kenya, the largest, overcrowded refugee camp in the world.
Fourteen years ago, a government program sponsored Duale to come to Canada as a refugee with his wife and three children, all of whom were born in the camp he lived in for seven years.
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He is now a firefighter and calls Halifax home. “What I’m trying to do today is ... to share with my fellow citizens what I have gone through, what I know and what they can do because they are the ones who changed my life,” he said, standing near a table displaying the Somali flag and images of refugee camps. “I came here through the Canadian taxpayers and I’m a taxpayer today, and I’m going to prove they can make a difference as they did to me.”
Lending a hand
One woman was “really glad” to see the firefighters’ support for the East African people.
Holly Eggleston, an aboriginal jewelry maker, took a handful of pamphlets for her business at the Halifax Seaport Market.
“I see tourists from all over the world on a daily basis. This weekend, I can put one of these with every package that I sell, just tuck it in there, and maybe, even if you make one dollar, that’s one dollar they didn’t have before.”
Team effort
Ali Duale started fundraising two weeks ago, and Halifax firefighters quickly got on board.
• “We didn’t want to wait any longer. As Ali said, every day that goes by, it doesn’t get on the ground,” said Chris Camp, the firefighters’ union public relations chair and treasurer.
• Through education about the famine, the group hopes people will donate by Sept. 16, the deadline for government donation matches.