PTC(UK) New Year Gaza Staff Update
At the start of 2024, an orchestrated famine grips Gaza. Many of our staff are now displaced and queuing like others for scraps of “aid”. In the midst of such misery, members of our team remain steadfast in trying to support their community, continuing to help wherever they can and in whatever simple way they can. When flour has arrived, our team have been making and distributing bread to local residents displaced amongst the rubble of their former homes.
Much of the population has moved south to find safety, but even here there are reports of attacks. A tent city is growing around Rafah amidst the winter cold, while recent rains have increased suffering and further exacerbated the challenges of social organisation. Our team, as well as a steadfast team of volunteer workers are actively seeking to make the best of an impossible situation, offering hope, facilitating small acts to improve welfare. Every one is an unsung hero.
Our staff, Niveen, Eman, Fedaa, Jabir, Firas, Yehya, Mahmoud and Ahmed have lost their homes. Niveen, an accountant for PTC recalls creating her elegant, modern apartment bit by bit over many years. It is now rubble.
With your help, PTC(UK) is developing a Recovery fund and planning both for short-term relief and long-term recovery. PTC(UK) has sent an initial round of short-term support funding, however much of our relief and support for the children of Gaza can only be released once there is a ceasefire and it is safe to start delivering community services on the ground.
We need your help to ensure that there will be no delay in the delivery of desperately needed psychological support to the children of Gaza as soon as the political situation allows. As the war continues, more die of hunger, disease and cold as well as bombing. The enormity of the trauma can only be guessed at, but PTC(UK) will be there for when the real therapeutic work can return.
If you are able to help us in this regard, please consider donating towards our emergency appeal.
Palestine Trauma Centre (UK) is a UK based charity that works to provide adults and children living within the Gaza strip with access to psychological support and mental health services.
Funds donated to our emergency appeal will be used to provide direct relief to the population of the Gaza strip, to support the reconstruction and restoration of our services within the Gaza strip or to provide staff training and remuneration to our team on the ground in Gaza.
Palestine Trauma Centre (UK) is a registered UK charity (1133560) with the Charities Commission of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and is registered with the Fundraising Regulator.
