My name is Wafaa El-Derawi and you may know that I’m the MECA Nutrition Coordinator in Gaza. There are no “normal times” in Gaza but usually my work is focused on getting healthy meals to children in kindergartens, supporting women with small food businesses, and delivering food parcels to vulnerable families.
The hunger I’m seeing now is unbelievable. So is the strength and determination of the MECA partners and volunteers in Gaza. Please donate now so we can continue getting food to children every day.
Make an Emergency Donation for Food Now
Israel is deliberately starving us. A report on hunger in Gaza just came out from a UN agency called the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). It’s filled with numbers, diagrams, and dry language but the story it tells is very real and very terrifying:
• More than half a million people are facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity. That is the last phase before famine.
• All children under five in the Gaza Strip—335,000—are at high risk of severe malnutrition and preventable death
• Four out of five households in the north, and half the displaced households in the south, go entire days and nights without eating. Many adults go hungry so children can eat.
I read this report but actually I didn’t need official figures and statistics. I can see the children are malnourished and hungry everywhere I go in Gaza. And though we are better off than many others in Gaza, I can even see the change in my own niece’s face which has grown gaunt.
Since October 7th, MECA has delivered food parcels to nearly 400,000 people in Gaza. With your contribution now we can keep getting fresh produce from local farmers and meal packages to thousands more children and families facing violence from the air, and deprivation from the ground.
When I’m able to meet or talk to MECA partners or volunteers we tell each other, we don’t know how much longer we will live but we will continue to the last moment of our lives. This is the time to work tougher, to help each other, and to put our humanity into practice.
Thank you for being in solidarity with us and for making our work possible. We will not give up and I hope you won’t either.
Shukran (Thank you)
Wafaa, Gaza Strip, Palestine
P.S. The report I mention in this message says that unless there is a ceasefire and a very large increase in the amount of food aid, Gaza will have a full-scale famine. We have to get as food to as many people as we can right now. We are partnering with the World Central Kitchen to set up community kitchens to serve hot meals to thousands of people in addition to distributing food parcels. Please donate now.
Photos from our work today
We have teams working in the 3 southern governates of Gaza reaching thousands of children with critical aid every day
Fresh produce from farmers with essential ingredients donated by World Central Kitchen
