URGENT: Help Ayman’s family evacuate safely

Thanks for your interest in reading my story, and we hope that you can help save our family from death and despair.

My name is Ayman Dwaima( 51 years old). I lived all my life in northern Gaza with my parents, wife and seven children.

We have been exposed to all types of danger in the ongoing war and we escaped death more than once. Our neighbourhood was under brutal airstrikes and we miraculously survived when our home was completely destroyed.

Many of our cousins, friends and neighbours were killed, injured or missing. My siblings lost their homes too and we have all been displaced in different places for more than 200 days, and I haven't seen them since then.

My family and I had to escape death from the north of Gaza to the south in Khanyounis, which was later under aggressive airstrikes. Therefore, we had to evacuate under fire at dawn to Rafah in the extreme south of Gaza Strip, walking more than 8 kilometeres on foot. We arrived a UN shelter in Rafah, where we stayed for several weeks until we had to evacuate Rafah again under continuous threats of a ground invasion.

We are currently in a makeshift tent in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza Strip. The nylon tent is too small, hot in the morning and cold at night. Insects are of kinds we've never seen before. Water is really scarce and hard to get. No future to think of, only depression.

What pains me as a father is the fact that I had to leave my eldest pregnant daughter, Hanin Dwaima ( 24 years old ) , behind in northern Gaza with her husband and son. She gave birth in there for her second child ( omer) , and they had to survive off amd eat animal feed and grass!

A year ago we celebrated the graduation of my second daughter, Nesma Dwaima ( 26 years old ) , who became a dentist and had a dream to start her own clinic. Abeer Dwaima ( 21 years old ) , my third daughter, was to graduate this year from the English literature department and start her journey as a graduate,but her study stopped for more than 7 months !

Abdullah Dwaima ( 19 years old ) , my eldest son, had started his second year as a computer engineer in IT college at Islamic University of Gaza . Now I don't see a lively young man in him; I see how pain and despair are turning him into an old introvert person. My other children, Mosab Dwaima (18 years old) , Raghad Dwaima (13 years old) and Mohammed Dwaima (12 years old) are still small with a future that they should live like any other kid in the world.

Moreover, bad news keeps coming as we were informed that our company ( Dwaima company) - for watches and electronics- in Gaza was completely destroyed. My father started this company in 1975 and my brothers and I followed his footsteps. Imagine 50 years of hard work gone in a blink of an eye!

If you can donate, please do, or at least remember us in your prayers if you can't and share our story with your community.

Your donation will save our family. It will help me as a father to stand for my family in the face of all these calamities.

My target of $50,000 will be used as follows:

1. $25,000 to rebuild our family home

2. $20,000 for my children Abdullah and Abeer to pursue their higher education in Egypt

3. $5,000 for orphan children in my area who lost their parent(s) during the ongoing war

Kindly accept my sincere thanks.

God bless you.

Ayman