Meet the Filipino offering 200 free meals a day to Dubai’s jobless migrants during coronavirus shutdown
- Feby Dela Peña started with US$136 worth of groceries, including 30 frozen chickens and sacks of rice. And then she began to cook
- Migrants account for 90 per cent of the workforce in the United Arab Emirates. The economic shutdown hit their communities hard
Feby Dela Peña saw her fellow Filipinos standing in line outside her building in Dubai, waiting for free food. And she was stricken – what if her family, too, had lost their income amid the Covid-19 outbreak? How would she have fed her three children?
“We’re poor, to be honest,” said Dela Peña, who is also unemployed. “But it’s not a reason for me not to help, you know?”
So the next day, she withdrew the money that was supposed to feed her family of five for a month.
When their 11 housemates got wind of her plan – like most migrant workers in Dubai, the family lives in a shared flat – those who could chipped in as well. She was able to buy about 500 dirhams’ (US$136) worth of groceries, including 30 frozen chickens and sacks of rice. And she began to cook.
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Unemployed Filipina offers free food to those in need in Dubai
That is how Dela Peña, 34, launched the project she calls Ayuda – it means help. Each day, she offers 200 free meals to the hungry of Dubai, all of them foreigners, like her own family.
Migrants account for 90 per cent of the workforce in the United Arab Emirates. The economic shutdown that came with Covid-19 hit their communities hard.
“Life is so hard and they don’t have anyone to depend on,” Dela Peña said.
Dela Peña is a confident cook who used to sell home-made meals to friends as a way to earn extra money. She said she also has a licence in food safety. But cooking 200 meals a day is a massive undertaking, especially with a six-year-old, a toddler and a baby at home.
The finances are dicey; Dela Peña relies on her husband’s modest income from a sales job. But when word of her efforts spread on social media, people began dropping off cartons of eggs and bags of rice. An influential Emirati blogger gave her 10,000 dirhams.
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She leans on her housemates, husband and her brother-in-law, who was let go from his job in a tea shop during the pandemic, to help with buying the groceries, thawing the meats, chopping the food and cooking. Ultimately, though, she’s in charge.
“It’s a big thing if you can help like 10 people not to sleep hungry,” she said, as she scooped up cooked rice, fried fish and boiled eggs into containers to distribute.
Her children’s wagon is used to deliver the meals each day. It is 3pm, and sweltering. A sign on a cardboard box announces: “FREE!!! FOOD FOR EVERYONE.”
Some people walk 45 minutes for one of Dela Peña’s meals. While most hail from the Philippines, there are also Africans, South Asians and others.
Six Filipino women, who come every day, said they haven’t worked or been paid since March when they lost their sales jobs. One of the women, Emma Moraga, said she heard about the meals on social media.
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“It’s good, because they can help a lot of people,” Moraga said. “One meal a day, it’s big help.”
Dela Peña remains nervous that authorities in Dubai could stop or fine her for violating laws on public gatherings or the distribution of food. But she intends to feed Dubai’s hungry as long as she can.
“If I will stop this, many people will stop eating,” she said.
