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Help Alaa recover after surviving the genocide

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Hello friends. I am Alaa Shatila from Gaza, Palestine.

Since I was a child, I have been witnessing great hardships due to living in a country with prolonged political conflict and frequent wars. Living in Gaza means that you could lose your life at any time or otherwise live your whole life with a disability if you get injured in the war or lose all that you own.

Since 2008, I survived six wars in Gaza: 2008, 2012, 2014, 2021, 2022, and 2023-24. Maybe I was luckier than many people in Gaza who lost their lives. However, I lost many things, of which the most important thing was feeling safe and living peacefully.

In the 2008 war, I was a 12-year-old child. I still remember the hard days when we shared the little food we had with our neighbors and the horror we felt every time we had to evacuate the house.

Despite all of that misery, I have been challenging these hardships to be a hardworking student and employee, hoping that I could have a better future.

In 2014, despite the deadly war that year, the horror, the frustrating surroundings and news, sounds of explosions, and news about death, I tried to create inner peace through hard work in my High School Studies. In June 2014, during the war, the High School results were announced. I got news that I was one of the top 10 students in Palestine with an average of 99.3%. Yes, I made my dad and my family proud of me. I still recall my mum’s tears of happiness when we got the news. My success story as a student who achieved distinction under the war conditions was published in many national newspapers to inspire students in Gaza.



Here is a link to a well-known electronic Palestinian newspaper "Donia Al-Watan" online page presenting my name as one of the best students in Palestine back in 2014.

I kept up this hard work during my Bachelor Studies. In 2020, I graduated from Al-Azhar University as one of the best students in the English Literature Faculty. Upon graduation, I was selected to be an English Teacher Assistant for visually impaired students at UNRWA Relief and Social Services "the Rehabilitation Centre for the Visually Impaired" in Gaza. I was so enthusiastic about the role as I hoped to inspire the visually impaired children and help them be better versions of themselves, especially in light of the stigma against disability in Gaza. I made great efforts to make my students love my classes and grow personally and academically. I was happy to remind them each class that they are not defective, but worthy and distinctive. I applied play-based learning for them to feel motivated to learn, play, and compete. At the end of the placement, I was regarded as the best teacher assistant at the Centre, with great feedback from my students.



Since 2020, I have been working on different humanitarian and development projects across Palestine to achieve social impact and enhance the living conditions of the most vulnerable people, such as women and children in refugee camps and marginalized places in Gaza. I always felt my responsibility towards humanity and wanted to invest my skills and experience to help people be better educated and equally empowered with resources so that they can be engaged in social roles. I volunteered at the Save Youth Future Society and participated in different campaigns, such as a campaign to collect donations to distribute food parcels for poor families in Gaza during the month of Ramadan. I also worked at the Palestinian Centre for Democracy and Conflict Resolution on the “Women Peace and Security Agenda” project, where I led capacity-building activities for young female graduates to help them be empowered with skills and engaged in the labour market. I also worked at Youth Vision Society on the "Let Me Tell You My Story" project, aimed at enhancing women's participation in gender equality, and with Norwegian People’s Aid on the Conflict Preparedness and Protection (CPP) project, which aimed to help school students be better empowered with awareness and knowledge to protect themselves in emergency and crisis times.


Gender Equality capacity-building workshop led by me at YVS


Celebrating the end of Let Me Tell You My Story project at Youth Vision Society YVS in Gaza




My work monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the Conflict Preparedness and Protection Project in primary schools in Gaza.

Due to my background in social work and my vision of empowering vulnerable people in Palestine, in 2021, I was awarded the prestigious Chevening scholarship funded by the FCDO to pursue a master’s degree in the UK. Although this Scholarship is extremely competitive, with about 64,000 applications from my country, with my strong vision and potential to drive positive changes in my country, I was selected. I enrolled at the University of East Anglia, ranked 1st in Development Studies in the UK, according to Times Higher Education 2022, and studied an MA program in International Social Development, where I understood global challenges, gender equality, and sustainable development goals SDGs deeply and got more motivated to work in the developmental and humanitarian field to support people around the globe. In 2022, I graduated from the School of International Development at UEA with Distinction.




October 2021: my first MA month with Chevening Scholars at the University of East Anglia Student Union SU Bar

University of East Anglia ziggurats




Chevening FCDO Conference March 2022

After graduation, in Dec 2022, I returned home filled with passion for family reunions. I wished to live with my family peacefully as I missed them a lot in the UK.

On 1st October 2023, I left Gaza to participate in a 5-day Global Conference: the “Compact for Young People in Humanitarian Action” Conference in Amman-Jordan, which was part of my work as a Youth Inspirator with ActionAid- Palestine.

I said goodbye to my family and was expected to get back home after a week. I did not know that this was the last time to see my home and to have a home!

Travelling to Jordan from Egypt was so hard as Gaza does not have an airport and we had to pass through Egypt by land and travel from the Cairo International Airport to Jordan. However, I was eager to attend the conference to present the youth’s situation in humanitarian action and advocate for more voices of youth in the decision-making process.


My Speech at the Conference, representing Palestinian youth.



Fellow young colleagues at ActionAid from different countries


On 6 October, I went back to Egypt, from Jordan, to pass again by land to Gaza. I arrived in Egypt at 11 PM. I slept and was supposed to return to Gaza the next day (7 October). Unexpectedly, I woke up on the news about the war. I was terrified and started to fear being stuck in Egypt and isolated from my family in Gaza. This is what literally happened.

The war got worse and worse, and I was feeling so lonely and worried about my family there. My family got displaced from one place to another- from the middle of Gaza where we lived to the South. For five months, I was isolated from them and could barely check on them due to the internet cutoff in Gaza.

On 17 October, I was terrified by the news about the bombardment of the house where my family was displaced in the South of Gaza (Rafah) and where all my family members got injuries. I got the news from my colleague and instantly got down on my knees and said: please tell me that they are all alive! They were alive but admitted to the European Gaza Hospital for treatment. I phoned my mother, who was crying heavily and mumbling” I am so sorry that I could not remove the wall that fell on your little sisters - Heba and Nour.”

bombing the house where my family was displaced

A News page showing a photo of my father when he was looking in horror for my sisters under the rubble.

On 19 November, when my family was still in the hospital, I was deeply saddened by the news about the bombardment of the area where my dad’s shop was located. My dad’s shop and all the shops next to it were damaged. This was the first time I heard my dad crying saying: “my efforts in improving the shop for 30 years had gone in 30 seconds!” my dad has a heart condition, and I was so worried about his health condition after this bad unbearable news. Since that day, my dad has been suffering from emotional distress, a sense of hopelessness, and disappointment. That night, I was admitted to Palestine Hospital in Cairo affected by panic. A few weeks later, I got continuous abdominal bleeding, for which I had to have surgery to stop the bleeding. It was so harsh to go through that without anyone of my family by my side and to avoid telling them not to make them worried about me in such conditions.



Dad's shop before damage
Dad's shop before damage

Dad's shop after damage

On 15 December, the only thing that stayed for us “our home” was bombed. The whole residential area “Palestine Square” was damaged and flattened to the ground. Hence, we lost everything we had! I could not believe that all my memories there were gone: my cozy room, our dining room where we laughed and had great nights together, my favorite cup of tea, my photos with my friends …

Memories from my home

Bombing the whole residential square "Palestine Square"


Nothing left for us and my family witnessed the worst conditions ever in the hospital, including a lack of medication, space, food, and hygiene. They were all literally sleeping in a 1*1 m corner in a room in the hospital. My dad and little brother were sleeping in the street on cold nights. In Feb, I tried to evacuate my family from Gaza, with donations from our friends and some debts. The cost of this process was 30,000$, paid to the Egyptian Authorities to allow them to pass from Gaza to Egypt by land- 5000$ for each of the six family members (Dad, Mum, Aya, Heba, Nour, and Mohammed). 5000$ is the typical cost Egyptian Authorities charge for each person to leave Gaza and pass to Egypt. Leaving Gaza was not only costly but also so risky and life-threatening as my family could die on their way from the South of Gaza to Rafah Crossing, but there was no other choice! My family finally managed to arrive in Egypt on 14 Feb. I could not wait to meet them, and we all cried heavily on our meeting! I could not believe that I was seeing them all alive.

I survived the war, but I have been living with compelling financial hardship and emotional distress since I was in Egypt. I have been trying to get employed in Egypt to help my family. Although I am qualified, we, Palestinians, do not get residency permits in Egypt, so can’t work outside the informal sector, which makes the situation further worse.

I am raising funds to help myself move to a safer country than Egypt, where I can live and work peacefully and to get the therapy I need, which costs 70$ each session.

Each little donation is appreciated!

Thank you.
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Donations 

  • Christelle Tagaully
    • £5
    • 4 d
  • Fal Elberdiji
    • £6
    • 5 d
  • Anonymous
    • £25
    • 2 mos
  • Anonymous
    • £25
    • 3 mos
  • Chiana Bhoola
    • £10
    • 3 mos
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Organizer

Alaa Shatila
Organizer
England

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