Please Bring Aman to Safety for his PhD in the UK

Aim

Aman, a young medical doctor, provides mental health care in Gaza. Please help him take up his PhD scholarship in war-time resilience.

Will you consider helping Aman today? If you are unable to help, would you share this request with others? Thank you sincerely. 

Aman has been providing mental healthcare to conflict-affected and at-risk children, women and men in Gaza as a part of a community-based organisation for more than five years. 

A young man in his 30s, he is a medical doctor by training and has a passion for understanding and strengthening community resilience and coping mechanisms. 

• When external aid cannot enter a war zone - and families live in the crossfire of conflict, with the constant gnawing of hunger and desperation - how do they maintain hope? 
• Where does courage and resilience come from? 
• And what can we - in the medical and humanitarian response communities - learn from the resilience strategies in Gaza that can help us to better support other individuals and families under fire in the future to endure and thrive in midst of extreme adversities? 

These are the questions Aman is hoping he can help answer. 

Aman has been awarded a full scholarship for a Phd to study these questions at a university in Manchester in the United Kingdom. He has also been awarded a stipend that will cover his living costs throughout the three years of his doctoral research. The value of the supports he has earned is more than £100,000.

All that stands between the building where he now shelters nightly expecting - and preparing - at any moment to potentially be killed in an airstrike, and a future where he can safely help advance the way in which we think about and care for the mental health of families on the frontlines is about £6,400. Those are the costs for the health coverage surcharges that have to be paid in advance and the visa application fee.  

Specifically, the £6,441 requested is for: 

• £998 - National Health Service surcharge per year x 3.5 years = £3,493
• £524 - Student Visa Application Fee
• £1124 -Transit from Gaza to Jordan, accommodation in Jordan, flight to UK
• £460 - Post-evac supplies & UK arrival (warm clothes, phone/credit, bus, etc.)
• £840 - UK accommodation / food until the first month's stipend payment from the university kicks in.

Aman is also the primary provider for his family - his parents, his younger brother and his sister, along with her three children. As a doctor and mental healthworker, in normal (peaceful) times he is able to provide for the needs of his family. At present however - it has been months since food shipments have steadily reached Gaza. He and his family ration food - skipping meals and eating smaller portions every day to ensure the children can eat. If, however, Aman is able to reach the UK - and to begin to receive regular payments (via the stipend he's earned) - he will be able to more regularly send support again to his family. 

Thank you for considering this request. Thank you for helping us help our colleague Aman. 

'We' are Dr. Kathleen Rutledge, a university lecturer in the UK and advocate alongside Aman for the strengthening of existing community capacities for resilience in emergency settings and Dr. Naomi Heller, a medical doctor specialising in Paediatric Palliative Medicine, with the National Health Service. Thank you sincerely. 

Kathleen and Naomi

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If additional funding is raised above the target it will go towards the costs below. 100% of funds contributed will go to support Aman. Thank you.

• £560 - additional post-evacuation* supplies - warm clothes for UK autumn/winter; academic equipment and supplies (*when prospective students are evacuated from Gaza and then released over the border into Jordan they are only allowed to pass with the clothes on their backs, without extra clothing, without a phone, etc. they have to restock once in Jordan). 

Photo credit: Prof. Elena Fiddian-Qasmiyeh / Refugee Hosts https://refugeehosts.org/

This project successfully funded on 15th August 2025