Seasonal projects
Ramadan and qurbani
6 million Somalis suffered acute food insecurity in Ramadan 2024
1.6 million children were acutely malnourished
As Ramadan 2025 approached 6 million Somalis were reliant on humanitarian aid to survive
Our seasonal programmes aim to ensure that vulnerable people in poor communities do not go to bed hungry during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and the festivals of Eid Al-Fitr and Eid Al-Adha.
Your donation to our seasonal programme fund helps us to feed the hungry in Ramadan and enable poor families to celebrate Eid together.
In 2024 we were able to boost our spending on seasonal programmes by $1.3 million and assist an additional 317,392 people, boosted by a 48 per cent increase in support from our generous donors around the world. In total our provision of Ramadan food packs, qurbani meat, Eid gifts and zakat cash assistance reached over 1.3 million people – a 32 per cent increase on the previous year.
In March and April, 141,876 people benefited from the hot meals and food packs provided by our hard-working teams in Ramadan. We cooked and served 54,450 hot meals, providing nutritious iftars for the most vulnerable to break their fasts. We also distributed enough Ramadan food packs to feed 87,462 people – 20 per cent more than in 2023.
Each of our food packs provides enough supplies to enable families to prepare their own meals for the whole of Ramadan, including flour, cooking oil, cereal grains, milk powder and sugar.
Fasting is one of the five pillars of Islam, and another is zakat – the practice of giving 2.5% of disposable income to support those in need.
In our biggest seasonal programme of all we provided qurbani meat for 1.9m people, enabling families to celebrate Eid Al-Adha and boosting livestock farmers’ incomes.
1.9m
People received qurbani meat from Zamzam in 2025
210,726
people received Ramadan food baskets or hot meals
Your donations to our seasonal programmes enable us to feed the hungry during Ramadan and help families who cannot otherwise afford fresh meat to celebrate Eid Al-Adha
Success story
“I want my family to thrive and have a brighter future,” says Abdullahi Shekh Ahmed, who lives with his wife Farhia and four children in the Wargaduud camp for displaced people near Baidoa. “We had to leave our village because the drought destroyed our farming livelihood.”
Zamzam’s seasonal food distributions provide families like Abdullahi’s with a double boost – a month’s supply of nutritious food to cook and eat when they break their fast in Ramadan and qurbani meat they could not otherwise afford at Eid Al-Adha. Our team on the ground has also built a new home for Abdullahi’s family and several other families in the camp.
