Photo: Dr. Abeer Dirar
As conflict wages in Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, leaving many people trapped in their homes, volunteers have been helping others in their neighborhoods, delivering life-saving medications, food and water, and checking on people's welfare. Basic services like electricity and water have been mostly cut off and bakeries shut down so bread has become scarce. The neighborhood volunteers connect and coordinate help on social media. If neighbors aren’t online, they check in on them in person. Donations help them buy scarce supplies. Dr. Abeer Dirar, who was volunteering with her neighborhood committee until a week ago, is working on the border between Sudan and Egypt. She is seeing all kinds of illnesses -- lots of diarrhea, abdominal pain and food poisoning -- and says the heat and lack of clean water and good sanitation don’t help. Dirar and her colleagues have been working around the clock as more displaced people arrive every day. Meanwhile, the insecurity has forced some community volunteers to leave Sudan entirely.
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