Stories from the Field

In post-war Gaza, one can easily observe the aftermath: displacement and homelessness are prevalent; poverty is visible; unemployment is raging; malnutrition among children is rampant; trauma and grief are widespread; and lost livelihoods are common. For many families, everything they had worked for or achieved all their life has been destroyed.

If such a reality is difficult for adults to bear, one can only wonder about the children unfortunate enough to experience and survive what is considered to be one of the most devastating wars the region has witnessed. The children of Gaza have witnessed scenes of death, bloodshed, demolitions, and experienced the loss of family members amidst an environment of fear and confusion. Children are left with a considerable sense of insecurity, especially when their parents become helpless in easing their fears and concerns. Adding to that, children’s basic needs are not met; many of them don’t have the clothes to wear to fight the cold winters, no appropriate shoes, no hygiene supplies and no toys. This negligence is not purposely created. It is as simple as this: families in Gaza cannot afford to eat since 80% of the population is dependent on humanitarian aid agencies.

Bringing hope to Pre-school Children in Gaza is an initiative recently launched by HCI that targets children in Gaza and respond to their various needs. The project targets children attending local community-run Kindergartens and provide them with tailored relief assistance: Winter clothes and shoes tailored to each child were provided for individually selected pre-school children through comprehensive needs assessments. Food items for children such as cake, milk, biscuits, cheese and yogurt were also distributed to children in need. School stationary such as books and pencils, and hygiene items such as tooth brush, tooth paste, washing soap and kids shampoo were also distributed to war-affected children. In addition, children were allowed to express their feelings, whether it was trauma, grief, fear or insecurity, through drawing, games and entertainment activities aimed at reducing the psychological impact of the war on these children.

These activities are complemented with a rehabilitation program targeting kindergartens damaged during the war by implementing a comprehensive physical rehabilitation which would allow pre-school children to continue their education and provide them with the space to play and learn away from the destruction of wars and poverty. The Kindergartens will also be provided with much needed educational materials and toys, as well as playgrounds.

Through a comprehensive needs assessment and extensive outreach activities each child was individually selected to benefit from the project. 160 children and their families benefited from this month’s activities targeting the children attending the Beit-Hanon community Kindergarten and Beit-Jablia refugee camp community Kindergarten.

The project is implemented in partnership with HCI’s local partner in Gaza, The Aid and Hope Centre for the Care of Cancer Patients and their Families and in coordination with the Palestinian NGO, the Vocational Rehabilitation Workshops Society for Girls (VRWSG) as well as the Gaza-based NGO, the Palestinian Early Childhood Education. Ten local volunteers helped make this project possible.

Tales from the Children

While walking through the crowds at Biet Hanon Kindergarten, Modelalah’s sad eyes captured us. She is 5 years old and lives with her family of 5 members. Her brother was injured during the war and lost one of his legs. Her father is currently unemployed. Modelalah almost cried when we talked to her, noticing that she had already opened her coloring pencils set she received. We asked her about what does she want to draw. “I want to draw a boy and a rose”, she responded. She promised that she will share her chocolate with the rest of her brothers and sisters, and she will save some for her brother who is being treated away.

We spotted Said hiding from the camera. We approached him and asked him why and if he was afraid from the camera or the team. “I am okay but I am feeling embarrassed because of my worn-to-pieces shoes. We don’t have money to buy new one”, Said responded. We explained to Said that HCI sent him new shoes and jacket and other nice new things. “Are you sure!”, Said wondered. We helped him sit on the table and showed him the new supplies provided by HCI. “Why HCI send us gifts?” Said asked us. “HCI is sending you this supplies because you are very sweet boy and very clever at the school,” we responded. Said wished that god bless HCI. He didn’t wear new clothes for a year now. He told us he can’t buy chocolate or deserts or anything. He asked us to thank HCI and to let them know that he loves all of them.

The weather was very cold outside, yet the child Wisam Sadat was only wearing a light sweater and a sandal footwear. Wisam spent the entire cold winter wearing summer clothe. When team member Lubna Najar offered to help him wear the new shoes and winter jacket provided by HCI and the other items, he got so excited and couldn’t believe it. Wisam draw house, girl and pretty flowers. With his new shoes Wisam was walking and jumping all over the place. Before we left he told us: I LOVE YOU ALL.

Bahaa is 5 years old from a family that consist of 14 members. His father used to work as a shoe tailor before he lost his job as result to the war. Bahaa was very shy when we approached him. We asked him why he is shy. “I am afraid”, Bahaa responded. Bahaa was occupied with the new shoes he received, “I can play football now. My old shoes are not for playing football, and if I lose them my dad can’t get me a new one. My dad can’t get me chocolate too,” he concluded.

5-year old Lila lost most of her family during the conflict. “I promise to share the chocolate and the biscuits with my brothers and sisters, and I will tell them how HCI made us happy in the kindergarten,” Lila commented after receiving the items provided by HCI. “I will draw flowers and butterflies. I will clean my teeth every night. I will have nice warm shower with my shampoo. Thank you so much for making me and making my friends in the kindergarten happy and we will never forget HCI and we hope they will never forget us”. Leila is sweet girt with doll-like face. She has suffered so many losses, yet she still wants to play and draw. She also made a new friend (Bahaa) on the distribution day.

Mohanad lives with his 8-member family with no source of income. Mohanad wants to be a pilot, yet the planes he wants to fly are not “like the Israeli ones” he said. Mohanad has no other pair of pants to wear. He jumped up and down the room when he received a new pair of pants from HCI. “Mohanad is behaving like a child again,” his mother, Oum Ahed, commented.

Shahed lives with her family of 9 members in Jabalia refugee camp. Her father suffers from a chronic injury that made him mentally challenged, and her brother lost his leg during the war. As Shahed bent down and started drawing happily, her mother Om Ahmed approached us to thank HCI for the generous donation. “I wish I could have offered my daughter want she needs, but there is nothing I can do. We can’t afford anything. My husband can’t work and now my older son is injured. I really don’t know how to thank you enough,” Om Ahmed commented. Shahed’s teacher told us that almost all of Shahed’s neighbors were killed during the conflict. She often tells stories about the war and a story about wolves who comes to hurt her family while they are asleep.

HCI launched this week the Kindergarten Rehabilitation Program in Gaza and is now working towards reconstructing the physical damages incurred on the Al-Majed School and Kindergarten located in the Rimal neighbourhood in Gaza City.

The Al-Majed school and Kindergarten was established in 1972 under the name Hashim’s Gaza, and renamed the “Two Sisters” Kindergarten in 1992. The Kindergarten was established as a refuge for orphans and children whose families were too poor to provide them with an education and other basic needs.

In an effort to grant these children their childhood, the Kindergarten worked very hard to provide not only education and recreational activities for these children but also provided them with basic necessities that they were otherwise deprived of. Uniforms and stationary were provided, including daily lunch meals.

As a result of its ongoing success the Kindergarten expanded, and the Al-Majed school was established in 2007. A new two-floor building, each floor equipped with five classrooms and bathrooms hosted the new school. In addition, a large playground area and a garden were built for the children’s entertainment and recreational activities.

Prior to the war on Gaza in 2008, 70 children were enrolled in the Kindergarten that included KG0-KG2 and another 15 children were attending the new school.

This success however, was short-lived since both the newly-founded school and the decades-old Kindergarten incurred serious damages as a result of the bombings that targeted the adjacent Borno Mosque. The twenty-two days of conflict which left over 1,300 Palestinians dead, over 5,300 injured, caused extensive damage to the kindergarten. The kindergarten suffering from severe physical damages and financial loss, has not only been unable to resume its normal course of work, but has also lost many of its enrolled children as a result.

As such, HCI with the cooperation of the Palestine-established Vocational Rehabilitation Workshops Society for Girls (VRWSG) NGO — the founder of the kindergarten — decided to assist in reviving the school by contributing towards its physical rehabilitation. In consultation with the VRWSG, a Gaza-based Engineering and Consultations company was designated with the task of assessing the damages incurred. As the recipients of this fund, the Palestine-based VRWSG will be responsible for the rehabilitation of the Al-Majed School and Kindergarten.

The Al-Majed School and Kindergarten is one of many others that will be revived by HCI as part of the Kindergarten Rehabilitation Program. Through this program, HCI wishes to physically rehabilitate these Kindergartens to allow children to continue their education providing them with the space to play and learn away from the destruction of wars and poverty.

HCI also hopes to assist in providing temporary employment/aid-for-work opportunities for families without a breadwinner to participate in the rehabilitation of those kindergartens in hope that this program can involve and benefit as many people in need as possible.

HCI team in Jordan was busy last month in Jordan launching its new initiative for Iraqi refugees living in Jordan: the Aid for Change initiative, aiding vulnerable people with the aim to change their lives through self-help and self-directedness. This new initiative will be implemented in partnership with the Jordan-based New Development Organization. It will build on HCI’s previous initiatives supporting Iraqi refugees in Zarqa, Jordan since the year 2007.

For poor Iraqi refugees, every day is about finding enough food, water and other basic necessities to survive: widows cannot afford to send their children to school and pay for their learning materials, when they can barely manage to survive on occasional in-kind assistance from their neighbors; the unemployed never have a chance to learn new skills if they spend all day making a living on the black market; and, poverty-stricken communities are too busy looking for food to rebuild infrastructure vital for redevelopment.

And to top all this, these poor refugees have to cope with all their feelings of grief, depression, disquiet sleep, and loss of appetite; which are normal human reactions to an abnormal incident and not the other way round. What they are going through is not a weakness in their characters or lack of faith, but they are alone and isolated in their suffering. The psychological demoralization has also shaken all the values and hopes that they carried.

HCI’s program will help low-income and needy Iraqi mothers, Iraqi with special needs to secure basic necessities for themselves and their families, such as food and non-food items. At the same time, this program will help them secure an income by themselves, so they can break out of the poverty trap and build sustainable future for the entire family either in Jordan or in their home country, Iraq.

HCI’s program will pay participants with basic necessities to build (or rebuild) their lives. Basic aid supplies, such as food and non-food items, given to the right people, at the right time, make it possible for them to devote time and energy to development opportunities. HCI’s assistance is to give Iraqi refugees the chance to take the first steps out of the poverty trap, thus to establish a life for themselves and their families.

The philosophy of this project is to unleash the potentials of vulnerable Iraqi refugees to establish themselves and help their families and their overall communities, while securing much needed necessities through relief aid. When these potentials are unleashed and made use of, these refugees will feel that they are able of bread wining, keeping a shelter, and belonging to an extended social group. All these satisfy the natural human hierarchy of needs, thus putting the mental/psychological state back on track.

Through this project, widows will be assisted to develop viable home-based businesses. They will be compensated with basic necessities to devote time and energy to develop such businesses. People with special needs will learn new skills and develop viable micro businesses that will help them build sustainable future. Women will be trained on practical topics such as parental and child health. Children will be assisted to stage a play addressing issues such social cohesion and peaceful coexistence. Children will organize a carnival and will be given educational materials and taught about issues concerning pluralism, gender equality, tolerance and non-violence.

This is what we termed as aid for change, aiding vulnerable people with the aim to change their lives through self-help and self-directedness.

On the 8th of March 2009, HCI worked cooperatively with its Gaza-based partner, the Aid & Hope Center for the Care of Cancer Patients, to celebrate the International Woman’s Day by promoting cancer early detection, particularly mammograms test which is among the best early detection methods for breast cancer among women. Breast cancer if detected early, the five-year survival rate exceeds 96%.

In Gaza, the awareness of breast cancer and opportunity for help is limited for women. Latest estimates show that less than 40% of breast cancer cases are detected early in Gaza - one of the lowest rates in the world. By promoting mammography test, Gaza women will have an opportunity to detect breast cancer when it is small, and when treatment options are available and a cure is more likely.

Mammography is a specific type of imaging that uses a low-dose x-ray system to examine breasts. Mammography play a central part in early detection of breast cancers because it can show changes in the breast up to two years before a patient or physician can feel them. Current guidelines from the international health bodies recommend screening mammography every one or two years for women, beginning at age 40, since the older a woman is, the greater her chance of developing breast cancer. Research has shown that annual mammograms lead to early detection of breast cancers, when they are most curable and breast-conservation therapies are available. When cancers are small, the woman has more treatment options and a cure is more likely.

The awareness campaign took place during the three-day fair organized by the Women Affairs Center, Gaza Chapter, under the slogan of “Despite the death and destruction, long-live the eighth of March: Exhibition of goods made by Gaza women.”

Thirty five women NGOs participated in this year’s exhibition, where 12 thousands women are expected to attend. NGOs are exhibiting their goods and products made by Gaza women.

Assisted by women volunteers from the Aid & Hope Center for the Care of Cancer Patients (AHCCCP), 900 women from Gaza filled in a questionnaire about breast cancer and they were given pink ribbons symbolizing the fight against breast cancer, donated by HCI. The team intends to complete 10,000 questionnaires by the end of the exhibition. The survey investigates, among other things, the current state of early detection of breast cancer, the mammography tests, and the perception of Gaza women in regard to the test.

Findings from this survey will help shaping HCI/AHCCCP’s future interventions concerning breast cancer early detection and the viability to implement a mobile clinic in Gaza specialized in mammography tests in the poorest and marginalized areas in Gaza.

“You can’t live with despair, and there is certainly no despair if you’re living.” Huda Al Shaghnobi or Em Wassim started her conversation with us, as we paid her a visit to deliver some relief items donated by HCI. Em Wassim was very much delighted to have us over in her small yet loving house.

Em Wassim’s voice became incredibly sad as she told us about how she had lost her husband last summer. “He died while trying to save my children’s lives. We were stuck in the elevator after the electricity cut off, he opened the elevator’s door between the 5th and the 6th floor, and while rescuing the family, he fell into the elevator’s hole. If I had not seen him, I would have never known where he was. All the rescue team’s efforts to save his life failed, and he passed away, leaving his 10 children behind”

“He is a martyr like everyone else who died as result of the continuous Israeli assaults on Palestinian citizens.” Em Wassim concluded. Their eldest son Wassim couldn’t see his father and pay off his last words of respect. Wassim himself had been injured during an Israeli invasion on the northern region of Gaza and had survived a few months coma. Wassim was hospitalized in Egypt and returned five months after his father’s death. He arrived to the house oblivious to the fact that his father had passed away.

Wassim shared with us how he received the sad news:”When I arrived to Gaza, I was looking for my father’s face among all this people that were there, but I couldn’t find him. I asked about him, and someone told me he was still at work, so I immediately called his cell phone to let him know that I had arrived, his phone was off. I went to our house, and stayed there until my mother returned and told me what had happened–I didn’t cry. Palestinians can’t afford to cry anymore.”

25-year old Wassim and his 23-year old brother Haithem who’s been married for five years have tried futilely to start a family of their own to no avail. Their father died without having the chance to hear the word “Granddad”. Wassim who continues to suffer from his injuries receives an income of $150/month from the Palestinian Wounded People Association. He requires a wheelchair for mobility and a minimum of $200/month to undergo physiotherapy.

Add on to that, Em wassim, was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago. She has managed to cover some of the medical expenses-doctor visits and a mammogram every six months through petty money donated by various charitable persons. Two years ago, her son Murid went into surgery for a punctured heart and required intensive medical care including a regular echo check-up.

Her daughter Haneen, have reached secondary school and has to borrow clothes from the neighbors because her elementary school clothes are worn out after having to wear them for four consecutive years. Her son Mohanad who’s in elementary school, does not own a school bag pack like the rest of his peers. Baraa the youngest daughter just went into kindergarten with only sandals on her feet. The family cannot afford winter or summer clothes.

This family is fighting poverty and desperation every day of their lives. Despite that, Em wassim’s spirits are high. She spends every day searching for sponsorship for her children including medication.

Em Wassim was speechless when Human Concern International offered her family the relief package. “I am thankful that you looked our way and helped us. I have never lost faith in the goodness in people and you have been very generous to us. May God bless you.”

(This story is part of a series of personal stories, compiled by Eman Khader, depicting the state of despair and hope seen in Gaza today. They have been compiled by HCI personnel during HCI’s relief and development work in the worst-hit areas in and around Gaza City. Through an at-home-needs assessment and extensive outreach activities each family received a parcel consisting of food and hygiene items which were put together in partnership with HCI’s local partner in Gaza, The Aid and Hope Centre for the Care of Cancer Patients and their Families. Forty-eight local volunteers are helping make this project possible.)

Suleiman Khalil Obied, his wife and seven children live in the Zeiton area in Gaza city. Their house is falling apart, dim and filled with mold. Suleiman hasn’t worked for years. His family is the poorest in the area. Their house reflects the need and poverty they live in, no drinking water is available, no electricity since they haven’t paid their bill for a year, and they have not paid their rent ($100/month) since six months.

Entering their house to deliver the relief items donated by HCI, we almost fainted from the mold. We couldn’t find a chair to sit on, and we noticed the electricity cable extended from the house of a good neighbor to use to light a bulb and an old television.

“There are no jobs available” Suleiman said, “and even if I find one, who would hire a person with a mental problem.” It seems that the hard circumstances he’s endured have affected his mental and physical wellbeing. There is a sense of despair in this family that only survives on the help of neighbors and families. The UNRWA provides this family with basic food items such rice and flour and occasionally provides them with a small amount of cash.

Dalal (Em Khalil) opened up to us: “I don’t know what to say. My husband is mentally unstable and my daughter was diagnosed with epilepsy. She requires medication monthly to the value of $100/month. I just feel like I have so much to deal with.”

Rafka, her 14-year old daughter is still in 4th grade of elementary school. She has learning disabilities and might be forced to quit school this year.

We saw Rafka sitting in the corner, she looked confused. As we approached her she asked us if we have “yummy” things to eat, and when we confirmed, she asked if we also brought her a doll to play with. We promised her that the next time we will.

Khalil the Eldest son (15 years old) left school 5 years ago, “we have no money, and I couldn’t bear have the other children laugh at my shoes and clothes, everyone takes an allowance but me.” He gasped.

Khalil left school so that he could help his family. He worked in different places. His last job was 2 kilometers away where he had to walk every day. His income was 5 shekel a day, an amount that is barely enough to buy bread.

It was obvious that the children in this family were suffering from malnutrition. We asked them to open the box, at first they were reluctant, but soon after they almost forgot about us, and started talking about the relief items in complete wonder.

As we left the Obieda’s house, we promised them that HCI will continue helping them to live a dignified life.

(This story is part of a series of personal stories, compiled by Eman Khader, depicting the state of despair and hope seen in Gaza today. They have been compiled by HCI personnel during HCI’s relief and development work in the worst-hit areas in and around Gaza City. Through an at-home-needs assessment and extensive outreach activities each family received a parcel consisting of food and hygiene items which were put together in partnership with HCI’s local partner in Gaza, The Aid and Hope Centre for the Care of Cancer Patients and their Families. Forty-eight local volunteers are helping make this project possible.)