Hi, my name is Jessica and my husband, Belal is from Gaza. As most of you likely know, the entire population of Gaza has faced heavy bombardment for almost 6 months now. His entire family is still there. We have been searching for a way to get them out for months. But it seems the only way is to raise enough money to pay the high price required to be put on the list to cross the border. There is a company in Egypt called Hala that would facilitate the travel from Gaza border into Egypt. We do have my husbands sister who is living in Egypt that we will send the funds to and she will go to the agency to pay the fees to get our family out. Unfortunately at $5000 (updated) a person, there’s no way possible for us to do this on our own. We are not people who like to ask for help but this situation is as extreme as you can get and we just want our family to be safe. Karma and Kinzie are 2 year old twins and their big sister Sham is 5 years old. Their mother and father, Basel and Safaa just want to be able to give them food and safety. Neither of which are available in Gaza. Eslam and Kanaan are the youngest siblings in my husbands family. Kanaan was attending university for engineering. They had just sold the family’s car to pay for tuition for the year, and now there is no University. Eslam has a heart of gold and will do anything to help anyone. Haneen is the oldest sister who naturally cares for everyone and is the sweetest person on earth (aside from their mother). She volunteers with children and teaches them how to make stop motion videos. Ebrahim and his wife Nour just married last year and were hoping to start a family. We are lucky Ebrahim us still with us. In the early months of this war, he was on the top floor of the home looking out the window, when a neighbors home was hit with a bomb. The force of the bomb blew out the window and blew Ebrahim into the wall across the room. He was unconscious and no one could find him (they mostly stay away from the top floor as it is the most dangerous to be in. Ebrahim has traveled Uganda to help build schools for children there. And the best parents ever, Mohammed and Ilham. As you can imagine, they are literally sick with worry every second of every day.

We are setting our goal at this amount to have enough to evacuate the children and their parents and two siblings. Of course if we can more, we will get out everyone we can. I know this is a tremendous amount of money and I feel awful having to ask for it but this is a matter of life and death. If you can’t donate, please share. These are wonderful people that just want to live.