Hello — I’m Asmaa (from Gaza). I’m 20 years old, but the truth is my life stopped when I was eighteen.

At eighteen I stood on the threshold of my future. I was an ambitious university student, full of hope and dreams — the kind of dreams that give you a reason to wake up every morning. I studied with passion, I worked hard, and I believed in tomorrow.

But I can no longer remember that dream.

Since October 7th, from the very first day of this war, everything that made up my life has been taken from me. My world collapsed all at once. I have been displaced again and again, living like a shadow of the girl I used to be. My family and I moved from one unsafe place to another: from our home… to overcrowded shelter schools… to a flimsy tent that doesn’t even protect us from the cold, the rain, or the fear.

My home is gone.

And my dreams — the ones that used to keep me alive — feel like distant memories from another life.

Every single day we fight just to survive. We endure suffering no human being should have to endure: suffocating hunger and the absence of any of my family’s basic needs, never-ending fear, and the constant terror of not knowing whether we will live to see the next morning.

This war has stolen everything from us — our stability, our future, even our sense of being human. All that remains is pain, loss, and the hope that someone, somewhere, is listening.

So please, help me and my family — to provide our basic human needs so we can keep living. We are not asking for luxury. We are simply asking for safety, dignity, and a chance to live.