This story is republished from the New York & Michigan Solutions Journalism Collaborative.
Amne Darwish-Talab has been stretching budgets and thinking outside the box for over 40 years, but never more so when building the country’s first Halal Meals on Wheels program.
Her work as social service director at ACCESS, or Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services, put her in frequent contact with community members. Still, she was stumped when a resident contacted her more than 20 years ago asking how to access food assistance that met Islamic dietary requirements. The client named Katherine repeatedly asked why she couldn’t receive food that met her religious and cultural needs.
That got Darwish-Talab thinking: Kosher meals on wheels were widely available, so why not halal?
Creating the program from scratch was a slow and laborious process. It took her a few false starts, but now Dearborn’s Halal Meals on Wheels program is a national model.
“They were seeing these [meals on wheels] being delivered every day to their neighbors,” Darwish-Talab said, “and were wondering why they weren’t getting a meal.”
At the same time, the Wayne County Senior Services and the Detroit Area Agency on Aging were looking into halal options for residents needing food assistance.
“They also were in the process of trying to figure out how to make this work,” she said. “So we were [all] thinking about it at the same time.”
So, in 2009, Wayne County Senior Services secured a grant to fund the country’s first halal Meals on Wheels program.
With the funding obstacle cleared, the groups had plenty of challenges before the program rolled out. First, they needed to find a halal-certified restaurant with sufficient staff to provide dozens of additional hot meals each week — and be willing to do so for the pennies on the dollar the funding afforded.
They found their hero in Ali “Mike” Aboukhodr, who owns Dearborn’s Country Chicken Restaurant. Since the restaurant already adhered to halal requirements, it could pledge to do the same for the meal delivery service.
Aboukhodr and his family stepped up to personally deliver meals but were met with resistance. Residents weren’t willing to open their doors to a stranger, even if he brought food.
Soon, though, Aboukhodr became a familiar and welcome face at the door of seniors looking for a taste of home.
“The program has broken barriers,” Darwish-Talab said. “And [the residents] are able to communicate better now with the people that are delivering the meals.”
Now, she says, “people enjoy seeing that face at the door, I think, especially those who are isolated and homebound and have nobody else living with them.”
Before long, Aboukhodr was a welcome sight, and the seniors “started asking him to come in, fix their window, read a letter for them, do the little things that they may need inside” their apartments, Darwish-Talab said.
Word of mouth spread quickly, as did the demand for their services. The program now delivers close to 100 meals per day.
On the other side of metro Detroit, in a converted church social hall on the Detroit border with Hamtramck, Joseph Figlioli and his team are busy every Tuesday and Thursday distributing large green shopping bags to a long line of residents who wait patiently, chatting with friends and family members about recipes and this week’s options.
Figlioli is the pantry manager at Muslim Family Services. Every week, he and his team of employees and volunteers assemble and dispense around 400 bags of food full of halal non-perishables, with fresh vegetables added on Thursdays and home delivery from a truck on Saturdays.
Figlioli faces many of the same challenges that Darwish-Talab recounted: chronic shortfalls in financing and increasing demand spurred by rising grocery costs and an influx of immigrants.
Hamtramck and Dearborn lead the state in Muslim and Arab-American populations: In Dearborn, 55.4% of the city’s residents claim Middle Eastern or North African ancestry.
In Hamtramck, immigrants from Bangladesh and Yemen add to a substantial Muslim population. Despite these numbers, few of either city’s social services are designed to accommodate Islamic dietary needs. Organizations like ACCESS and Muslim Family Services step in at the micro level to keep families fed.
Most of Muslim Family Services’ donations consist of pantry staples like rice, sugar, cooking oil, and canned goods, with fresh vegetables on Thursdays and occasionally halal meat donated by a community member.
Sometimes, Figlioli said, “we get donors that donate food, and I don’t think they understand the dietary restrictions” of halal eating. Figlioli arranges for the food to go to another organization that can use it.
During Eid al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice, Muslim Family Services works with halal butchers, restaurants, and community leaders to gather and distribute Qurbani, a meat sacrifice that is an essential component of the Islamic holiday. In 2023, Figlioli and his team coordinated Qurbani for more than 150 families.
Figlioli said that in the past couple of years, “the demand has gone up. Especially with the inflation now, a lot of people are struggling to buy food. Also, at least in this community, a lot more refugees and people are fleeing war-torn countries.”
In Dearborn, Darwish-Talab has also seen more refugees needing assistance beyond the Meals on Wheels program, designed for seniors who often cannot cook for themselves.
“I started noticing with the influx of a lot of new refugees and immigrants from their kids bringing them here to live with them,” Darwish-Talab said. “We started seeing a huge number of seniors coming into the community.”
This presented a new and unique challenge. The more recent, older immigrants, Darwish-Talab said, “were not socializing much during the day. They were alone until their kids came home from work or until their grandkids came to check on them. There was a lot of isolation.”
Darwish-Talab sensed a rare opportunity for more community building for Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services programs. Working with Joan Siavrakas, the director of Senior Services for Wayne County, they designed a series called Congregate Meals at the ACCESS center.
Up to 20 adults gather twice a week to share a community halal meal.
The program, which started in July 2023, has quickly gained momentum. Now, the Friday meals include presentations on social and behavioral health, Medicare, Medicaid, immigration aid and other relevant topics.
“It’s not just the actual food itself — it’s the social aspect of it, I think that’s what it is, the emotional and social aspect of it is bringing people together, and they’re enjoying it, and feeling like they all have something in common,” Darwish-Talab said.
The community of Congregate meal attendees has become a close-knit one. They check in on ill members, celebrate births and compare recipes for traditional foods.
The Halal Meals on Wheels, food pantry distribution, Qurbani distribution, and Congregant meals demonstrate the demand for religious and culturally appropriate meals for seniors.
“We get so much satisfaction that we’re able to provide this to our community, just like the mainstream community is getting it,” Darwish-Talab said. “We hope it continues. We’d like it to be expanded to other areas.”
Where to get halal meals
ACCESS Dearborn
accesscommunity.org
Amne M. Talab| Director of Social Services
Direct line: 313-945-8105
Hamtramck Muslim Family Services
office@mfs.icnarelief.org
313-366-6800