Aid for Children and Families in Gaza

Dear Friend,

Everyone in Gaza is at risk of starvation. Small children are among the most vulnerable.

We see this in the children’s nutrition clinics MECA has been supporting for many years. Enormous rates of malnutrition in children under five years old that get higher every day. The children we send to hospitals because they need more intense treatment are dying because the hospitals don’t have the supplies they need.

Everyone on MECA’s staff, and the staff and volunteers at our partner organizations, have been working tirelessly for nearly two years to support their communities. All of them are exhausted, traumatized, grieving loved ones--and hungry, like everyone else.

But nothing stops them.

Below are some updates for you on what we are able to do right now in Gaza with your support. It is not enough. Gaza is still officially experiencing famine. But we wanted you to read and see how your donations are helping and ask you to please keep taking action for Gaza.

In July, MECA managed to get fresh vegetables from local farmers in central Gaza for the children with moderate and severe malnutrition being treated in the clinics we support.  Then in August, we bought and packaged dry food like lentils, rice, beans, and tahini for these 1,000 families.This food along with the supplements and special fortified foods we have in the clinic are keeping them alive. 

We still have three solar-powered community kitchens running as much as possible--relying on local vegetables and whatever ingredients we can get from our partners or buy on the lcoal market. We made falafel sandwiches at one kitchen last month thanks to a donation of flour for pita bread. We are currently cooking more than 15,000 hot meal every day.

Local women are also baking bread and simple meals in MECA’s wood-fired clay ovens every day for families who bring whatever flour or food they have.

We are installing new latrines and showers in camps for displaced families around Gaza City.

We are distributing drinking water by truck daily all over Gaza. Our mobile generators pump water for from wells for cleaning. We have expanded this work to deliver 1 million liters of safe, clean drinking water to children and families in Gaza each and every day. Workers with donkey carts remove garbage from tent camps.

These efforts are both amazing and, as they say in Arabic, “a drop in the sea.” Children will continue to starve.  And if they survive, they will suffer from the impact of hunger on their small bodies and developing brains.  

We must continue to do what we can to support the children and their families, while working for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, an increase in aid, and a free Palestine.

With gratitude and solidarity,

From All of us at MECA