Hand in Hand with Deir Al Balah School Camp, Gaza

Aim

Neighbour to neighbour project supporting 150 families in Deir al Balah school camp. Food. Solidarity. Dignity and more.

This is the fourth time I am fundraising for Sabr and Sanaa's grassroots solidarity and relief project in Deir al Balah School camp in Gaza. 150 families are being supported with fresh groceries, cash, meals, clothes and more. This food and dignity project has been running since July 2024.

Raghad, Sanaa, Fajr, Sabr and AbdelRahman in their tent

Current Aim - To Support 150 families throughout the month of Ramadan with:

A fresh fruits and vegetable basket plus meat and dried foods every two weeks. 

This currently costs £200 shekels (£48). The aim is to provide one every two weeks for each family in the camp.

The project also aims to organise and collectively cook two community iftars for the camp.

Backstory

Sabr and Sanaa are from Beit Hanoun in Northern Gaza. They co-founded the Beit Hanoun Local Initiative in 2007, protesting and documenting massacres and attacks on their community by the Israeli Occupation Forces. 

Local Initiative provided psychosocial and educational activities for children and young people as well as material support for the poorest families. That project and culture continues today.

I lived with Sabr and Sanaa when I made it to Gaza aboard the Free Gaza Movement's Dignity boat in 2008. As a coordinator for the Free Gaza Movement, I volunteered with ambulances during the war on Gaza in 2008/9. Together with Sabr we documented crimes against humanity and war crimes and supported people in the aftermath.

This Genocide

Sabr and Sanaa's family homes, ancestral homes and whole town have been destroyed in this genocide. They have been displaced eight times. 

Sabr was disabled in an airstrike on a hospital he was visiting in January 2024. Despite having to use crutches and struggling with pain, he and his family continue to build dignity and solidarity in their community, providing relief for their neighbours with food parcels, clothing, cash, blankets, toiletries, cooking utensils and basic meals.

Sanaa and Sabr's daughter Raghad defiant on the ruins of their home

A fortified rice pudding meal for children in the camp

Compiling fresh fruit and vegetable parcels for families in the camp

The parcels

Ongoing genocide, ongoing solidarity 

Israel has violated the ceasefire agreement of October 2025 over 1600 times. Warplanes continue to bomb Gaza on a daily basis. Reconstruction, medical equipment, and aid continue to be blocked. At the time of writing, 601 Palestinians had been killed and 1607 have been injured in the last four months. This is in addition to well over 75,000 'violent deaths' documented by the Lancet between October 2023 and January 2025, the vast majority of them women and children. Everybody in Gaza is grieving.

Food and other essential goods are available to buy on the local market but people have no income. Everybody is struggling all the time. Aid kitchens provide camp inhabitants with one meal per day and it's not enough. Life in tents is gruelling. 

This people to people initiative supports the already present but severely strained culture of sharing, volunteering and looking after each other as kin, community and family - everything genocide and colonialism seeks to destroy.

Sanaa and Sabr distributing cooking equipment in the camp

Providing new clothes for children in the camp

Distributing duvets in the camp - on the left is Fajr, Sabr and Sanaa's youngest son

Why this matters

This is another chapter and tactic of solidarity in the struggle for Palestinian liberation. Maintaining peoples agency, capacity and ability to keep up community in the face of erasure is vital to the strategy of Sumud (steadfastness). From wherever you are, to Gaza, support the resilience of the people to stay on their land and survive this genocide!

This project successfully funded on 4th April 2026