We are four months into 2026. Ramadan is behind us. Dhul Hijjah opens in just over two weeks. Before the next sacred season begins, we wanted to pause — and tell you what the last four months looked like.

Roughly half of them were children.

You stood with 1.3 million children — 660,897 boys, 655,538 girls. With 71,000 Zakat beneficiaries. With over 10,000 people living with disabilities. Across 180 active or completed projects, in 10 countries, in four months.

Here is what those numbers looked like on the ground.

On 12 January, our teams carried hot meals across North Gaza, Ramal, Deir Al Balah, and Khan Younis. 18,000 freshly cooked, nutritious meals — into the hands of families who had been surviving on dwindling supplies for weeks. Children. Elderly. Mothers without electricity, without ovens, without space. The smell of cooked food reached camps that hadn't seen one in days.

That was one day's work, in one country, in one quarter. In Gaza alone in Q1, you reached 1.2 million people across 18 active projects — including ongoing clean water provision to 200,000 people.

And inside that bigger number is one tent, somewhere in the strip:

A 12-year-old named Rahaf Rayan sleeps beside her mother and siblings. She lost her father and two brothers. Despite injury, displacement, and hunger, she keeps going to whatever school she can reach. She wants to be a doctor.

Children like Rahaf — their dreams kept alive through education, through faith, through one warm meal at a time — are what the number 1.2 million is made of.

In Gedarif State, 2,400 families opened food parcels filled with flour, lentils, oil, dates, and the staples for a month of suhoors and iftaars. In Al-Affad Camp in Northern State, 260 households received emergency food while displacement levels stayed at their highest. By Eid al-Fitr, our teams had delivered Zakat ul Fitr parcels to 1,000 more families across Khartoum and Gedarif — 800 in Gedarif, 200 in Omdurman. Sugar, flour, lentils, chickpeas, oil, dates, dried hibiscus. Just in time.

Sudan is now the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Famine has been confirmed in Darfur. Your Q1 work in Sudan reached families through corridors others couldn't.

Across 44 projects in Q1, you reached 311,000 people. Among them: 763 families in Basti Eman, Rahim Yar Khan, recovering from the 2025 monsoon floods that displaced three million across the country. Each family received four kits — food, hygiene, dignity supplies, and winter protection.

In Tehsil Taxila, where many households are led by widowed mothers carrying everything alone, 150 Ramadan food packs filled cupboards for the entire holy month — designed to last all 30 days.

And across flood-affected communities, solar-powered Reverse Osmosis water plants joined the 208 new wells already built. Clean water as long-term recovery.

208 wells built this quarter. Clean water reached 200,000 people in Gaza and 260,000 in Sudan.

In Kahda District, Mogadishu — a camp for families displaced by drought — Eid morning came with new outfits for every child: 278 boys received a shirt, jeans, and shoes; 278 girls received a dress, a veil, and shoes. Not a single child had to face the most special day of the year without something new.

Across the country, you reached 251,000 people across 17 projects in Q1, including medical supply distributions to partnered health facilities — essential medicines, surgical masks, equipment to ease the burden of waterborne illness in displacement camps.

Day 2 of Feed the Fasting at the Psychiatric and Neurological Hospital and the dialysis centre at Al-Thawra Hospital in Taiz — where over five million Yemenis live, a fifth of the country. 280 patients received daily meals: rice, roast chicken, vegetables, bread, shafoot, samboosa, ashar can, water. 400 families received meal packs sized for four people each, with instruction cards for keeping the food warm and a feedback line for families to call. Day 2 alone fed 1,880 people. The full month ran the same way.

By Eid al-Fitr, 2,477 children had also received Eid gifts — not just toys, but a structured psycho-social support intervention for children whose entire childhoods have been shaped by conflict.

In Syria, you helped inaugurate a newly rehabilitated health centre in Anjara, in the western countryside of Aleppo — pediatrics, internal medicine, reproductive health, vaccinations, free medication. In Senegal's Sédhiou region, six water wells, dairy animals for 70 farming households, and agricultural kits with hands-on training for 50 farmers — the first phase of an integrated food security project. In Lebanon, hot meals reached an Orphan Care Home and the Afaq Institute in Saida. Active Q1 work also continued in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Türkiye.

During Ramadan alone, 1.6 million people sat down to a meal — across 47 projects in 9 countries. Nearly a million of those meals were served in Gaza. The rest reached IDP camps, hospitals, schools, and orphanages from Mogadishu to Aden to Karachi to Khartoum.

But Ramadan was one season. April carried clean water in Gaza, water wells in Pakistan, medical supplies in Somalia, orphan and child welfare programs across eight countries. Steady, year-round, post-season work — the kind that doesn't make headlines but keeps families alive between the seasons.

And now Dhul Hijjah is starting.

We would like to thank you for your support.

The ten days are coming. Our work is not yet done. We'll write again soon.

2.7 million people. 10 countries. 180 projects. Thanks to your generosity, the work doesn't pause. We are counting on you.

By Human Appeal

Canada