“I’ve children and when you look on the television or online and you see the suffering they are going through you feel like you have to do something,” said Mustapha Aboubi, the proprietor of the popular Olive Tree restaurant in Castlebar this week. Today, Friday, Mustapha will be donating all the proceeds from his business to children in Gaza who have suffered during the current conflict in the West Bank.
Mr Aboubi explained how the idea came to him. “It was last Friday and I was thinking what can we do to help the children there especially, and I came up with the idea and when I told my staff about it they all came on board and will be donating their pay for the day towards the cause. It may not be much, but it’s something that can do good for the people there. The average wage in Gaza for someone who has a job there is from €150 to €200 a month, so even a little can go a long way to providing food, clothing and shelter to the children who are suffering on the ground in Gaza.”
This is not the first time Mustapha has got involved in charity work for people in the region. He has helped collect three containers, and has almost another container ready to go, full of clothes and goods to be sent to Syrian refugee camps, and he travelled to a refugee camp last December to see the work being done by the charity Human Appeal International.
“You can go and talk to your local politicians about what’s going on in Gaza and get them to try and do something, but I feel that this is something that we can do on the ground ourselves and have some effect on the people’s lives on the ground,” Mr Aboubi concluded.
