As she was finishing her first year at Fordham Law School, Mariam Zein-El-Abdin ’22 added to her already packed schedule by helping to organize relief efforts for Sudanese immigrants whose health and livelihoods have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Zein-El-Abdin is no stranger to supporting her community through volunteer work—it runs in her family. Her father, who immigrated from Sudan, is an active member of Houston’s Sudanese community and helped found the Sudanese American Public Affairs Association (SAPAA). SAPAA works in a coalition of nearly 50 other outreach organizations to offer support to the Sudanese community. That coalition was galvanized by the 2018 revolution that removed President Omar al-Bashir from power. “The American diaspora really plays a role by getting money and supplies back to Sudan,” Zein-El-Abdin explained. “Many Sudanese Americans are now a part of the government including the new head of the Ministry of Health, who is a doctor from Virginia.”
The coalition also works to support the Sudanese Ministry of Health. The country has more than 1,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, mostly in Khartoum and the surrounding cities. Their campaign to raise funds for personal protective equipment and medical supplies raised $164,981 in under three weeks.
When the coronavirus pandemic began to spread across the United States, often disproportionately affecting immigrant communities, the coalition was already primed to spring into action. The effort began as a call to cover burial costs for the Sudanese Americans in the New York City area who had lost their lives to Covid-19, and it grew from there, organized primarily by Alla Yoonis of SAPAA and Dr. Nuha Abrahim of Sudan NextGen. Sudan NextGen, an organization in the coalition that supports Sudan’s growth and development, launched a Covid portal with access to different resources, including a hotline for Sudanese Americans to call and request various types of support.
“People can either reach out via the website, Facebook Messenger, or they can call the hotline,” Zein-El-Abdin said. “And, an intake person will try to direct their call based on their need, whether it be medical, grief counseling, psychological, financial, or legal. So, it’s this huge coalition of volunteers—doctors, lawyers, and people in the financial sector who are part of these different organizations that are coming together and volunteering their time.”
Zein-El-Abdin is involved on the legal side of things behind the scenes, working to protect volunteers on issues of consent and privileged information. “Beyond that, I am trying to be a resource for these organizations, especially since I’m based in New York,” she said.
All of the volunteers speak Arabic, as many older Sudanese immigrants feel more comfortable using their native tongue. Since the hotline launched on April 28, it has received over 100 calls from all over the United States. Zein-El-Abdin says she is pleased with how quickly word has spread about the hotline to Sudanese communities all over the country: “At a very base level, it’s a support organization for Sudanese Americans where they can speak to someone in Arabic and it’s not a daunting experience to ask for help.”
