Narrated by Basel Khalil
Compiled by Wei Yu-xian
Translated by Wu Hsiao-ting
Photo by Abdulrahman Hritani
I endured a four-hour wait under the scorching sun, standing in a queue until I finally received my supplies. Wanting to spare others from similar painful experiences, I created the No-Wait System.
Basel Khalil (left) serves at a Tzu Chi distribution for victims of the February 2023 earthquakes in Türkiye, ready to step in whenever needed.
Two moments in my life stand out prominently to me. The first was when I donned the Tzu Chi volunteer vest; the second was in 2019 when I visited Taiwan and met Master Cheng Yen. I presented the Master with a Family Card during that visit, the same card used during Tzu Chi’s distributions in Türkiye, affectionately named “Master.” This occurred shortly after my marriage, and in return, Master Cheng Yen gave a gift to my wife. Fast forward to October 2023, when I visited Taiwan again, this time as a proud father of a daughter.
I was in my third year of studying software engineering at a university in Damascus, Syria, when the war broke out, forcing my family and me to leave our home and move to another province. I left home at six in the morning each day, got to school by noon, and hurried back home after two classes. Delaying meant having no place to stay for the night. I spent a significant amount of time commuting every day just to attend classes.
We relied on aid from charitable organizations for survival, queuing up for supplies, which was a painful experience. I tried to convince my brother to join me during a distribution during Ramadan, while we were fasting, but he refused. I had to go alone. I stood in a queue under the hot sun for four hours, but finally got my supplies. I informed the distribution staff I was a software engineering student and could help improve the queuing system.
Every day, I thought about designing a system that could spare people from long waiting times, as I had experienced. The organization could only serve a hundred families a day before I offered to create a No-Wait System for them, and even that took a considerable amount of time. After implementing my system, they were able to assist up to 800 families a day.
I joined the charitable organization after offering to create the system for them, and I remained with them even after obtaining my university degree. Working for them was an experience unlike anything in the regular job market. However, war eventually forced me to leave my home country. I’ll never forget the pain my departure caused my father. He didn’t want to say goodbye; his eyes were filled with sadness, but he tried his best not to show it.
The desire to see my father again never left me in Türkiye, not for a single day. After five years of separation, he told me he could finally visit me with my mother. Tragically, the day he got his passport, he passed away. My heart was broken.
I became an employee at El Menahil school after arriving in Türkiye. A month after I joined the school, I was asked to help with a distribution event on that weekend. I was surprised and asked, “We are a school; what are we distributing?” They replied, “El Menahil was founded by a charitable organization, so we are part of the organization.”
The next day at the distribution site, I saw people checking a wall for their names, just like students checking exam results. At that moment, I finally understood that the two years I spent working for the charity organization in Syria were to train myself to help these people!
As I had done in Syria, I successfully developed a software system to expedite Tzu Chi’s distributions. By sending distribution information to the care recipients, allowing them to register for the preferred date and time to collect our aid, and integrating this information to notify them when they could come to the distribution venue, the process became more efficient. On distribution day, after verifying their identity using the check-in system, claim slips would be printed, enabling them to receive their aid. This streamlined process provided more time for volunteers to interact with the care recipients. Additionally, the system could be monitored remotely online. It became a helpful tool during Tzu Chi’s distributions for Ukrainian refugees in Poland, and we were allowed to understand the entire progress of the events from Türkiye.
A team is like a computer; it must have power, and the power source for our team is Master Cheng Yen and everyone else in Tzu Chi. With the support from Tzu Chi, our “computer” can handle everything. I sincerely thank Master Cheng Yen. Her compassion has warmed everyone’s heart.
