Empowering communities to tackle poverty and vulnerability

In Iraq, our support for small start-ups, vocational training and apprenticeships is giving young people real hope of building a more prosperous future.

The two-year project, which concluded in 2025, focused on Thi Qar and Halabja governorates – two areas where the local economy is struggling to bounce back from the devastating impacts of conflict, climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. Seven out of 10 young people in these areas were unemployed before the project began.

In partnership with local businesses and government institutions, the project supported 841 people. This included 308 young people (160 women and 148 men) who participated in structured apprenticeship placements and 219 who enrolled in technical and vocational training programmes to improve their employability.

The project also established a new website, Irtiqaa, to connect businesses looking for young talent with suitably trained young people.

Three hundred apprentices completed 40-day apprenticeships focusing on areas of the economy held back by skills shortages – including healthcare, construction and agriculture. More than half of the participants reported that their income had increased within five months of completing their apprenticeships or training.

The project also strengthened local entrepreneurship by providing:

• business development training and coaching to 314 business owners
• 168 conditional cash grants to help establish or expand microbusinesses including tailoring services, beauty salons and food processing initiatives.

Our innovative Qurbani Plus Project enabled small-scale farmers in Mali’s Koulikoro region to build diverse family farming businesses around the market for qurbani meat in the lead-up to Eid al-Adha. Before the project only 39 per cent of people in the participating villages ate a diet adequate to stave off hunger and malnutrition. Now, that figure has risen to 95 per cent. The project began by providing 45 families with two bulls each to fatten for sale. A third of these cattle were subsequently sold for qurbani meat, with two-thirds sold outside the qurbani season, providing significant income for participants.

Our annual Winterisation Programme has long provided blankets, heating materials (fuel, firewood, wood stoves and olive pomace) and food to help families endure the coldest months. Now, cash is becoming an increasingly vital form of support.

In Bosnia, Albania and Kosova, we cover the energy bills of families in need to help ease the burden of higher bills in winter and the rising cost of living. In Yemen, Türkiye and Lebanon, among other places, we provide cash vouchers that families can use to buy winter clothes from selected suppliers. Cash is used throughout our winterisation and other seasonal programmes, including our Ramadan and qurbani distributions, to help families meet their immediate needs and support their wellbeing.

Since 1986, Islamic Relief’s Orphan Sponsorship Programme (OSP) has been supporting vulnerable orphaned children and their families to access education, healthcare, and improve livelihoods for a brighter future. Guardians of children enrolled on the programme receive a monthly stipend to pay for necessities such as food, school fees, schoolbooks and uniforms; or to cover any healthcare costs for the sponsored child and their siblings. We were supporting 100,283 orphaned children across 26 countries at the end of 2025.

In late 2025, we launched a campaign to match the thousands of orphaned children on our waiting list in Gaza with sponsors. By the end of the year, 24,405 in Gaza were receiving sponsorship, compared to 19,011 in 2024, reflecting how the OSP has expanded to meet the rapidly growing needs on the ground. The OSP continued to expand in Gaza in 2025, reaching an additional 5,300 orphans.

Rama, 16, was among the children waiting to be matched with a sponsor in 2025. In September 2024, her father and four of her siblings were killed when their home was bombed. Rama lost a leg and suffered third degree burns in the attack.

“Now I am struggling a lot with education. All my friends are carrying on with their studies, but in my current condition, I cannot go to the temporary education tents – the roads in Gaza are not suitable for my wheelchair.

“I don’t have a mobile [phone] and we have no internet. My academic level has dropped from before, I’m not able to maintain it… I’m sad when I think about how I used to be and how I am now.

“My ambition was to become a translator and learn a lot of languages. Insha’Allah, we find a sponsor for me so I can work on myself and achieve my dreams.”

“I used to dream of becoming a teacher, but our lives have changed so much,” says Obaida, who is living in a camp for displaced people with his grandmother and remaining family. The young boy’s days are dominated by fetching supplies for his family. “[Now] I dream of the end of the war and of living in safety and peace. I dream of being able to enjoy fresh fruit and vegetables again.”

Sponsorship has brought some respite. “We have been able to buy everything using the sponsorship money from Islamic Relief: blankets, food, kitchen utensils, clothes,” he says. “Everything was expensive, but, as my grandmother says, we had no choice but to buy it.”

Milon’s world was turned upside down at just one year old when his father, a hardworking farmer, died of cancer. His mother was left alone, with Milon and his older sister struggling to keep the family afloat. “There were days when we had two meals, and days when we had none,” Milon recalls.

After enrolling on our OSP, Milon saw his family’s fortunes begin to change. He moved through school as a Grade A student and went on to receive a first-class degree in Chemistry from the National University of Bangladesh before pursuing a Master’s degree.

Now 27, Milon is a teacher in the Rajbari district of central Bangladesh, using his knowledge to help the next generation reach their full potential.

“This job is more than just a source of income for me,” Milon says. “This was my dream. I wanted to teach children, especially those who are vulnerable. Also, for me, it is a symbol of hope, a reward for my hard work. I believe with great support, anything is possible.”

In February 2025, we extended our OSP to support vulnerable children in Morocco, where Islamic Relief began working after a devastating earthquake in 2023. The disaster killed nearly 3,000 people and injured thousands more.

More than two years on, many people remain in need of support, including orphaned children who are growing up displaced, injured and without one or both parents.

By the end of 2025, 67 children in Morocco were receiving monthly stipends through the OSP, while some 370 were waiting to be matched with a sponsor.

With 50 per cent of hospitals and 61 per cent of primary care facilities damaged or destroyed, many new and expectant mothers in Gaza are struggling to get the care they need. Maternal healthcare became a major focus for Islamic Relief in Gaza in 2025. We provided consultations, medicines and vitamins, and hygiene kits, reaching more than 5,700 women in total, and assisting with almost 350 deliveries.

Through our partnership with the World Food Programme (WFP), we supplied 35,000 new and expectant mothers and their children with monthly supplies of a lipid-based supplement, helping to support their nutrition amid a severe hunger crisis.

When identifying what rural communities most needed in Puke, Diber, Gramsh and Shkoder, Albania, hospital beds came high on the list.

Where hospital facilities had fallen into disrepair and neglect, new state-of-the-art beds made it possible to provide better care and treatment for vulnerable people suffering from serious illness, and especially for patients who need to spend a long time in hospital.

The project, which entered its second year in 2025, provided 65 high-quality beds to three local hospitals, serving a combined 150,000 people. The same project also provided 45 families with greenhouses to boost their incomes, and our team is now working on the final phase, which will see eight new wells constructed to serve communities.

In Kenya’s Wajir County increasingly frequent and severe droughts have left tens of thousands of children suffering from acute malnutrition. The condition is also highly prevalent in pregnant women and new mothers.

Through the Scale Up of Maternal, Infant and Young Child Nutrition in Wajir project, which concluded in July 2025, our staff and volunteers improved the health of children and mothers in the county. Among the support we provided was:

• refurbishing the maternity and nutrition stabilisation centre at Wajir County Referral Hospital to improve the unit’s lighting and other facilities, including adding dedicated breastfeeding stations
• sending mobile community teams into hard-to-reach areas each month to identify people in need of treatment for malnutrition, treat children for worm infestations and provide women and children with supplements and information
• working with the local health department to train community health assistants and volunteers and deliver messages on improving health, nutrition and hygiene to women
• creating and distributing materials on maternal health to healthcare facilities and public spaces
• strengthening existing mother-to-mother support groups and establishing new ones
• organising and running nutrition campaigns during World Breastfeeding Week and other relevant moments
• developing six radio talk shows and dramas addressing maternal health for broadcast on local stations.

While barriers remain to raising healthy children in Wajir, the project vastly improved local knowledge on maternal health among both mothers and healthcare workers.

“Before the training, I used to believe that water was necessary for babies during hot months, but now I know breast milk is enough. I have learned to talk to other mothers without judging them. We share experiences, and they feel more open to try exclusive breastfeeding. The training gave me confidence. I can now explain to my neighbours and relatives why exclusive breastfeeding is important and how it protects babies from diseases.”