4 Oct 2024
Monday 15 October 2018 - 15:40
Story Code : 323322

Iran's new breed of charities on poverty frontline

Bourse and Bazaar | AFP: At an outreach centre in southern Tehran,teenagers are learning to be journalists, while upstairs their mothers arefine-tuning their sewing skills and rushing to fill an order for hospitaluniforms.

The brand-new centre in the working-class neighbourhood of Shahr-e Reycaters to hundreds of struggling families and Afghan refugees.

It's a relatively new approach for Iran, where social welfare has oftenbeen left to informal groups based around the bazaar and mosque or fallen tolarge-scale government-controlled organizations.

Today, privately-run charities are emerging, with managers, targets andbuzzwords such as "empowerment" and "skills-training", and funded by wealthybusiness people who have made fortunes in booming industries such as privatehealthcare.

This centre is run by the ILIA Foundation, created by social workers andmembers of the Nikan Hospital Group, who have partnered with UN refugee andhealth agencies to help around 1,000 families from deprived backgrounds.

For now these groups can only reach a small number of those in need butsupporters say it is providing a model for future social work in Iran.

At one of the sewing machines is 27-year-old Somareh Ghazvani, asecond-generation refugeeone of around 3 million Afghans who have fleddecades of conflict across the border.

"It was a surprise to find this place. The conditions are much better thanother places I have worked, so I'm very happy," she said.

In the computer room, 16-year-old Masoumeh is working with InDesign andPhotoshop as part of her summer classes in journalism.

"Our families have really counted on this centre. If we go to classessomewhere else, the fees are so high we can't afford it," she said.

Poverty Lines

One of the pioneers of the new approach to charity is the Imam Ali PopularStudents Relief Society, which was recognised by the UN in 2010 and has builta network of 12,000 volunteers helping Iran's poorest children.

A recent football tournament it organized for street kids was a reminder ofIran's diversity, as Azeris, Baluchis, Kurds and many others were throwntogether on the pitch in Tehran.

"The only choice for most of these kids in their neighborhoods isviolence, poverty and misery. We have tried to give them self-confidencethrough sports to improve their lives," said Meysam Vahdei, head of sports forthe foundation.

Ten-year-old Obeidollah had travelled since 3:00 a.m. from one of Iran'spoorest citiesSarbaz in southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan provinceand,inevitably, dreams of being the next Cristiano Ronaldo.

The foundation brought him to Tehran so he could participate in thetournament in a sport he loves.

"Some charity workers came to our city square. They saw me do a backflipand said 'Wow! What a boy', and now I'm here in Tehran playing football," hesaid, excitedly.

Official data on poverty is hard to pin down in Iran.

The labour ministry said 800,000 households were eligible for governmentsupport because they earned below the poverty line of seven million rials(around USD 160) a month, according to a report in January by the FinancialTribune.

The English-language newspaper cited prominent economist Hossein Raghfar assaying some 12 million Iranians lived in absolute poverty, in a country with apopulation of around 80 million.

Faced with mounting economic woes, President Hassan Rouhani has introducedwelfare cuts and other austerity measures since coming to power in 2013.

The government was already struggling to support the poor before the recentreturn of US sanctionsafter Washington withdrew from a 2015 nuclear dealbetween Iran and world powerswhich has sent prices soaring and threatensto take a huge chunk out of the budget this year.

That has put more pressure on charities and private donors, and encouragedthe more modern approach to charity work.

'Breaking the Poverty Chain'

"We need to help these kids at an early stage of life to get them on theright path and help break the chain of poverty in their families," said RezaTaghdir, a doctor with the high-end Nikan hospital group and a director forthe ILIA Foundation.

It marks a change from the old ways of doing things, said one of ILIA'spromoters, who asked not to be named.

"In the past, some old guys would get near to death and start worryingabout the afterlife, so they would hand out a load of money to build somethingin their name. It was really just about status and was not very organized," hesaid.

"Now it's much more professional, the donors are younger and much moreconcerned to find real solutions to problems in society."
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