Two Fairfax County sisters have raised $4,000 to send food to strangers in Cuba, working from their home to feed at least 60 people caught in a humanitarian crisis on the island.

Suraiya Farooqui, 17, and Safiya Farooqui, 11, launched a grassroots initiative called Plates without Politics after their cousins in Havana reported deteriorating conditions in April.

The sisters live in Vienna and have family ties to Cuba. Their grandmother immigrated to the United States in the late 1950s.

Their cousins, Alex Trapaga Richards and Lizet Torres, contacted the girls' mother, Maryam Farooqui, to describe worsening shortages of food, fuel and electricity. Cuba's national power grid collapsed in March 2026 after the U.S. began intercepting oil tankers bound for the island from Venezuela in December 2025, according to Al Jazeera reporting from that month.

The sisters use an e-commerce platform called Supermarket23, one of several online services that allow people outside Cuba to purchase non-perishable food for delivery on the island. Food shipments are exempt from the U.S. embargo. Their cousins receive the bundles in Havana and distribute them to neighbors, families with young children and elderly residents.

One recipient is Rene Hernandez Gonzales, an 84-year-old man who lives alone and cooks in his sink by burning old books.

"When we first started sending food, we started sending to the neighbors, and were also sending to the most neediest of families, and to the ones who have maybe younger children, or to the elderly," Safiya told the Fairfax Times.

Suraiya, who last visited Cuba at age 7 and remembers walking the Malecón seawall with her father, said she has communicated with Cuban students who can no longer get to school because public buses and trains stopped running due to fuel shortages.

The sisters' goal is to raise $10,000. No public donation page has been announced yet.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at a press briefing on July 23 that the U.S. was sending $100 million in humanitarian supplies to the region, to be distributed by nongovernmental organizations on the ground.

Cousin Alex Trapaga Richards relayed a message from one recipient to the Fairfax Times: "She says that she still cannot believe that something so beautiful and unexpected has happened to her. She sends her thanks and blessings to all of us who have helped her."