Support Project Watermelon Families

DISCLAIMER: Due to the fast moving nature of the situation in Gaza, the needs of families, and more, we remain flexible in the use of funds for Project Watermelon families. This allows us to fill a need we may not have planned for more quickly, depending on urgency.

Project Watermelon helps families in Palestine connect with resources, healthcare providers, and the world through supporting efforts to evacuate and truly live post-evacuation.

Our team works with growing networks of virtual providers and on the ground teams in Palestine to facilitate the needs of families and individuals. This means we help support fundraisers for Palestinian families seeking to evacuate or meet basic needs, emergency medical evacuation with our partners, and provide educational information on Palestine and family needs.

Pictured above is our leadership team who work within varying areas of Project Watermelon. Ranging from mental health programming to evacuation assistance to aid distribution and family video creation, our team works together every day all day to ensure we’re meeting the needs of over 450 families on our verified list and families who’ve applied for aid.

Services we offer to families:

Currently, our virtual medical team and health professionals include Dr. Ghadeer, our general medicine and pediatric consultant, and our Mental Health Director and co-founder, Dr. Nicole Aliya Rahim. We also have many volunteers helping Project Watermelon communicate and facilitate medication needs for patients, provide referrals for families, and support additional nutritional needs for children and mothers.

Project Watermelon is building out our Mental Health Provider Program by working and partnering with mental health providers internationally and locally in Canada and the United States. Dr. Aliya, a PhD Behavioral Analyst is our Program Director and is actively accepting applicants to assist our efforts in building a culturally competent, multifaceted medical team to meet the needs of Palestinians from both psychological and physiological aspects. Project ’s MHPP will serve Palestinians around the world through an integrative care perspective, ensuring the religious, cultural, and familial needs of patients are met, each step of the way.

Sarah Potter, our Executive Director, works with our aid and evacuation teams and partners to facilitate delivery of crucial aid, food, medicines, and registrations/evacuations. Sarah and Dr. Aliya work together to ensure that Project ’s mission is upheld in each facet of the organization. The organization’s mission is that with each step we make we’re accepting of everyone we come into contact with and address the needs of our team and families served with the utmost respect, equality, and warmth.

Project Watermelon has successfully completed several aid drops. Our first aid drop supplied $700 in the very beginning stages of Project Watermelon to three families in need of food, medicine, and clothing (photos below). The families we helped were:

We’ve also been working with our evacuation partners and physicians to facilitate evacuation for a family of four with the first brother registered and awaiting approval for evacuation.

You all remember little Jude, the young boy separated from his mother living alone. We have been able to find the boy, raise awareness about his needs to groups in Gaza and Project Watermelon personally fundraised $13,000 for Jude’s registration and evacuation to reunite with his mother. Thank you to our watermelon community for helping to make this happen!

Project Watermelon has also supplied three food kitchens. One in the northern area of Gaza (seen below), another in the middle area of Gaza with Ibrahim for Gaza, and a third through Bridge to Baladi for food, supplying our families in Rafah.

Photographed above are our cash envelopes. We supplied over 100 families with financial help to purchase baby formula, diapers, and fresh foods for babies and small children along with their mothers.

Watch the food kitchen in action here: https://www.instagram.com/p/C4aTLNUIM9A/

Project Watermelon does not set up GoFundMe pages for families. We do however offer support and assistance in technical support and troubleshooting issues.

With so many families having their own GoFundMe donations pages raising the funds needed to register and evacuate to safety, we have partnered with Safebow to facilitate registration and evacuation as well as establishing Project Watermelon’s foothold in Egypt to continue to facilitate, legal, safe, evacuations for families.

The funds Project Watermelon raises for evacuations through here are dispersed to our teams in Egypt through Western Union or MoneyGram, collected ethically and safely, and then provided to our registration team to ensure a seamless registration process that keeps our team and families safe. In working with Safebow, Project Watermelon will assist and facilitate evacuations for Project Watermelon verified families.

Project Watermelon donations are used to fund our efforts in Egypt for families and not only helps us provide registration services, but supply families with housing, food, and clothing post-evacuation. Creating a safe, reliable, comfortable space for families are the long journey to evacuate is a part of our Phase Two mission as Project Watermelon.

Your donations are quite literally saving lives, reuniting young children with parents, establishing a regular medication routine, and housing families in and from Palestine.

Donating your money through mutual aid projects like Project Watermelon and Safebow does so much good for everyday families who would otherwise fall under the radar of larger organizations serving a wider population. Our team is effective, communicative, and has a track record of success with each of our efforts. Our list of families are a variety of close-knit families, families with disabled and impaired individuals, and young children orphaned from their mothers and fathers. Palestinians do not deserve the harm that has been done to them–then and now. Project Watermelon’s main goal is to continuously serve Palestinians families and provide safety, security, and love as much as possible, given the difficult and unbearable circumstances most Palestinian families are living in.

Donating your money to Project Watermelon goes miles and years into the future for these families. Shukron elkom for everything you support Palestinians with through your donations. Your support is greatly treasured by each and every one of us.

Shukron elkom,

Sarah Potter

Co-Founder & Executive Director of Project Watermelon.

DISCLAIMER: Due to the fast moving nature of the situation in Gaza, the needs of families, and more, we remain flexible in the use of funds for Project Watermelon families. This allows us to fill a need we may not have planned for more quickly, depending on urgency.

Have more questions about the work we're doing? Please email us at contact @ project-watermelon dot org.