Courtesy of Our Three Winners
Our Three Winners
The Light House Project is hosting an Interfaith Food Drive this month in honor of Our Three Winners, the three Muslim students who were killed in Chapel Hill nearly a year ago. Organizations are collecting donations from now until Feb. 20, when items can be dropped off at the Islamic Center of Raleigh from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. to be delivered to the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina.
Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, a 19-year-old first-year environmental architecture student at NC State; her sister Yusor Mohammad, a 21-year-old December 2014 graduate; and Yusor’s husband, Deah Shaddy Barakat, a 23-year-old May 2013 NC State graduate and second-year student at the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Dentistry were killed by a neighbor Feb. 10, 2015, in Chapel Hill. Their legacies continue to live on through organizations created in their honor by those closest to them.
“We started organizing a food drive this past weekend,” said Shadi Sadi, an organizer of the event. “Last year we did a really big interfaith food drive after they passed away, and I think we raised almost 15,000 cans and $2,500 … I think the food bank said it was one of their biggest single-day donations ever, so we decided we’re going to do it again this year.”
Groups of all kinds, including mosques, temples, churches, synagogues, student organizations and nonprofits, are encouraged to participate. The food bank’s needs list and contact information for interested organizations can be found on the Facebook event page, “North Carolina- Interfaith Food Drive in honor of Deah, Yusor, & Razan.”
The Light House Project dedicated Deah’s rental property in historic downtown Raleigh to serve as a community space, with the organization’s overall goal of “advancing the Muslim-American narrative through outreach, advocacy, and storytelling,” according to its website.