Ahmad, the nephew of one of our staff, is a 25 year-old living in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Like other Palestine refugees, as a school-aged kid, he attended the local UNRWA school where he got a solid education.
Ahmad gets up every day and tries to make ends meet for his family. But despite being well trained and certified by a local college to fix home appliances, Ahmad can’t find steady work. The struggle of life under a brutal blockade is relentless and exhausting. There are very few jobs and no way out. These woes are only compounded by a merciless pandemic.
One Friday in Summer 2018, Ahmad was participating in the March for Return when he survived a traumatic experience. While with his friends, a sniper shot the man standing next to him. The same bullet hit Ahmad in the chest and knocked him to the ground. Eyewitnesses reported him dead, and ambulances took Ahmed to a nearby hospital.
Miraculously, an hour later, Ahmad’s family found out that he survived!
Despite living under harsh conditions, Ahmed has a wonderful sense of humor and loves to smile. Like so many in Gaza, he has a strong will to persevere and will perform any odd job he can find. The problem is, these jobs are few and far between, leaving folks trapped in poverty.
Ahmad now qualifies for food assistance, making him one of the million or so Palestine refugees in Gaza to be on UNRWA’s quarterly food program — much of this life-sustaining assistance is provided due to your decency and generosity!
Ahmad’s family uses UNRWA flour to prepare bread, cooking oil to make french fries, powdered milk gets turned into yogurt and cheese, and with the chickpeas they make falafel. He told me: “the lentils we used to make soup kept us warm… Adam, my youngest, really likes it.”
