Meet the Founder
Moe
Sayed
Founder & Executive Director
The person behind the mission.
23+
Countries
7
Programs Built
$500
Where It Started
1
Mission
“I saw a child who needed $500 to survive. I sent it. A few weeks later, a completely different child - alive, smiling.”
In His Words
The Origin
I spent 18 years in real estate. I was good at it. But there was always something pulling at me - this feeling that I was building the wrong thing.
Then I saw a child in Yemen who needed $500 to survive. A surgery that would save his life. Five hundred dollars. I sent it.
Then more cases came. And some of those children didn't survive the wait. The system was too slow. Too many layers between the person who could help and the person who needed it.
That's when I stopped treating this as a side project.
UMMA didn't start with a business plan. It started with a wire transfer and the realization that speed, not intentions, saves lives.
The Realization
Relief alone
wasn't enough.
After Yemen, I looked around Brooklyn. People sleeping on the sidewalks, blocks from where I lived. That became the Hope Bus - weekly meals, hygiene kits, and the kind of human connection that reminds people they haven't been forgotten.
But giving alone doesn't change anything. The same faces kept showing up. I was treating symptoms, not building solutions.
18 years of business taught me one thing: systems outlast events. If I wanted this to work, I had to build infrastructure - not just run campaigns.
What That Conviction Built
From a wire transfer to an ecosystem.
Umma Relief
Speed saves lives
What started with a single $500 surgery now operates in 23+ countries. Emergency aid, medical care, rebuilding homes - delivered with the speed that saves lives.
Hope Bus
Community starts at home
Born on the sidewalks of Brooklyn. Weekly meals, hygiene kits, and human connection for people sleeping outside - because community starts at home.
UMMA Farm
Self-funding engine
8,000 acres of sustainable agriculture in Egypt. Not a donation model - a self-funding engine that generates revenue to fuel relief work indefinitely.
Yala Restaurant
Food feeding food
A 100% nonprofit restaurant. Every plate sold funds community meals. No shareholders, no profit extraction - just food feeding more food.
Umma App
50,000+ communities
Technology that connects people to causes. Making it easier to find, join, and support the work closest to them.
The Philosophy
What guides every decision.
Dignity, not just survival
That first night on the Hope Bus, we served real food on real plates. Not because it was efficient - because people deserve more than a handout.
Systems, not just campaigns
18 years of business taught me one thing: events end, systems compound. Every program we build is designed to fund the next one.
Transparency, not just promises
Every dollar is tracked. Every project is documented. Trust is not a slogan - it is an operational requirement.
“The goal was never to build a charity. It was to build something so strong that one day, people don't need us anymore.”
Join the Mission
Be part of what
this became.
It started with $500 and one child. Today it is farms, restaurants, technology, and thousands of lives changed.
501(c)(3) · Tax ID: 86-3883211 · All donations are tax-deductible