LONDON – Members of the Sikh community are taking their tradition of religious hospitality to one of the most inhospitable places on Earth – five miles from the Syrian border in refugee camps for people fleeing that country’s civil war.
Langar Aid, an extension of UK-based NGO Khalsa Aid, has been running a bakery that is currently feeding 14,000 people a day.
Volunteers of the organization have been feeding distressed people for over a year now and giving them new hope. Although started as a full fledged Langar, the volunteers had to strip down the traditional model and focus solely as a bakery due to the small quantities of food that can make it through to the Kurdish region.
On the other side of Syria, on the Lebanon-Syrian border, the organization is also helping refugees by running a school for 5,000 local children.
Ravi Singh, CEO of Khalsa Aid, told the media, “Refugees often mistake us for IS because of our appearance.”
Most of the volunteers with the organization are from Europe, with ancestors from the northern India’s Punjab region.
