### FROM GAZA TO DUBLIN, WITH A PAN AND A PURPOSE

My name is Manal, and I'm Palestinian from Gaza.

I grew up in a kitchen that was never quiet. There was always something simmering, always someone chopping, always my mother's voice telling me to taste before I season. Cooking wasn't a hobby in our house. It was how we showed love. It was how we gathered. It was how we celebrated even when there wasn't much to celebrate. I fell in love with food before I even understood what that meant. I just knew that when I cooked for someone, something shifted between us. A plate of maqluba or a fresh batch of falafel could turn a stranger into family, and that feeling never left me.

In 2024, I lived through six months of the genocide in Gaza. I lost the world I knew. And then, with my heart still anchored to my family back home, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I left to pursue my Master's degree in Ireland, alone, carrying nothing but grief, resilience, and the recipes my family raised me on.

When I arrived in Dublin, I was lonely. I was grieving. I didn't know anyone. But I knew how to cook. So I started doing the only thing that ever made sense to me: I made food. Palestinian food. My mother's hummus. My family's musakhan. The dishes I grew up eating in Gaza. I cooked them in a tiny kitchen in Dublin and I shared them with anyone who wanted a plate.

That's how Madleen was born.

What started as a way to keep home close turned into something bigger than I ever imagined. I started hosting pop-up events across Dublin, and people kept coming back. They brought their friends. They told me they'd never tasted anything like it. RTÉ News featured us. Madleen became more than food. It became a bridge between Gaza and Dublin, between loss and rebuilding, between a painful past and a hopeful future.

Now I'm ready to take the next step: launching Madleen as a full-time Palestinian street food truck on Dublin's streets.

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### THE PLAN

I want you to know this isn't just a dream. I've done my homework. I've spent months putting together a full business plan, looking into every cost, every licence, every permit, and running the numbers under different scenarios to make sure this can actually work. And it can.

The idea is simple: a food truck serving authentic Palestinian street food. Falafel wraps, shawarma, creamy hummus, musakhan, maqluba. All made from scratch using my family's recipes from Gaza. Every dish is something I learned to cook at home, and I've spent years perfecting them.

The funding covers everything needed to launch and survive the first few months safely: the truck, kitchen equipment, licences, insurance, branding, initial stock, a cash reserve for operating costs, and an emergency fund for the unexpected. I've stress-tested the numbers even under the most cautious assumptions, and the model holds up. I wouldn't be asking for your support if I wasn't confident this can stand on its own.

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### WHY THIS MATTERS

Madleen is about more than selling food from a truck. It's something I carry with me every single day.

Culture. Palestinian food is one of the most beautiful cuisines in the world, and not enough people know about it. Every wrap I serve is a conversation. Every plate is a piece of Gaza on a Dublin street corner. I want people to taste where I come from.

Impact. 10% of all profits go directly to Gaza relief efforts. Every customer, every plate, every euro contributes to helping families back home. The families I had to leave behind.

Rebuilding. I want to prove that even after you lose everything, you can still build something meaningful. Something that feeds people, creates jobs, and keeps a culture alive thousands of miles from home.

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### WHAT YOUR CONTRIBUTION DOES

Every euro brings Madleen closer to the streets of Dublin:

- €10 covers a portion of our initial spice and ingredient stock

- €50 helps toward licensing and food safety certification

- €100 contributes to truck branding and signage

- €500 supports a month of commercial kitchen rental

- €1,000+ goes directly toward securing and fitting the food truck itself

Even if you can't contribute financially, sharing this page means the world. Every share brings Madleen closer to someone who might be able to help.

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### A NOTE FROM ME

I want to be honest with you. Asking for help is not something that comes naturally to me. Where I come from, you figure it out, you push through, and you make it work. And I have been doing that. I've been job searching, studying, building Madleen on the side with whatever I had.

But the truth is, I cannot do this alone. I'm a recent graduate, my savings are not enough to cover the full startup and operating costs, and I don't have family here who can help. What I do have is a brand that people already love, a business plan I have stress-tested down to the last euro, a deep love for cooking that has been with me my entire life, and a reason to keep going that is bigger than me.

Cooking is the one thing that has never let me down. It got me through the hardest year of my life. It connected me to people in a country where I knew nobody. It reminded me of home when home felt impossibly far away. And now I want to turn that into something real. Something lasting. Something that gives back.

This isn't just about a food truck. This is my path to building a life where I can support myself and support my family back home. They are the reason I keep going. Every day I work toward this, I am working toward being able to take care of them from here, because that is what they would do for me.

And that's why I named it Madleen. Madleen was the first fisherwoman in Gaza. In a world that told her the sea wasn't her place, she went anyway. She carved out her own space and she made it work. That story has always spoken to me. It is what I am trying to do here, thousands of miles from the sea I grew up near, building something with my own hands in a place that was never supposed to be home but is becoming one.

If Madleen's story speaks to you, if you believe in Palestinian food, in small businesses with a mission, in people rebuilding after everything has been taken, I would be honoured to have your support.

Every plate Madleen serves will carry Gaza with it. 10% of every profit goes back home. And the rest goes toward building a future for me and my family.

Thank you for reading this far. Thank you for believing this is possible.

Manal

Founder, Madleen. Authentic Palestinian Street Food.

Dublin, Ireland