Where It Started

UMMA started in New York in 2021 with emergency relief: food, medical aid and supplies for families in a crisis. The first work was bread, handed out in Yemen.

Relief is still the reason most people find us. What changed is what we learned from doing it: an emergency ends, and the need does not.

A woman in Yemen holding a bag of UMMA bread

What It Grew Into

So we started building things that keep earning after a donation is spent. UMMA Farm grows olives and alfalfa on land we own, and the harvest is sold. Yala is a halal restaurant that gives its profits away. The Hope Bus takes hot meals, blankets and hygiene kits out to the streets of New York every week, and more cities are next. UMMA Center is our first youth and family center, on Staten Island, open seven days a week, and UMMA Studio is a recording room for podcasters and filmmakers.

What the businesses earn goes out as food, medicine and cash where it is needed.

What Comes Next

Everything we run is a community you can join in the UMMA app: follow a harvest, watch a delivery land, and see every donation you have made in one place. We file a public Form 990 every year, so you never have to take our word for any of this.

Next: more of these, built so a community anywhere can copy one, run it, and fund it themselves.