Twice a month, the Muslim Students’ Association of MSU helps out the homeless of Lansing by hosting an event called “Project Downtown.”

“What we do is we make sandwiches for the homeless,” psychology sophomore and volunteer chair for Project Downtown Amal Mohamed said. “We provide them with water bottles and chips and cookies and string cheese. And then we wrap them up individually for them.”

The people who receive the sandwiches seem grateful, neuroscience sophomore Hiba Abu-Haltam said.

Abu-Haltam was at the event on Friday to help prepare the food.

“It’s really fun, we always get together and just make food together,” Abu-Haltam said. “Whenever I go there, like this morning I went and they wrote me a thank you letter and it was really nice.”

President of MSA and international relations junior Mohammed Rathur said that the sandwiches are usually peanut butter and jelly, but sometimes they add in meat if they have extra money.

“After the Friday prayer, we have everyone come make these sandwiches,” Rathur said. “We take them in a box and we have water, and then we drive (to) downtown Lansing on Larch Street (and go to) Volunteers of America and we distribute the sandwiches basically to the homeless people that are there.”

The MSA usually makes about 50 sandwiches. Any leftovers they have are given to VOA’s soup kitchen so they have extra food for dinnertime.

According to Rathur, Project Downtown has been a tradition in the MSA for more than five years. In 2006, MSA National and Project Downtown joined forces to combat the rising rates of homelessness in America.

“Some people say this is the only meal they’ve had all day,” Rathur said. “You just get a lot of blessings basically from people.”

Rathur said the shelter is especially busy during the winter months, which is when more people hope to receive sandwiches.

“A peanut butter jelly sandwich in the middle of the winter is sometimes the greatest thing for them during the middle of the week, so we do what we can to help everyone,” Rathur said.