Dear friends,
Today I want to draw your attention to our urgent appeal to raise funds for communities in the Gaza strip. I’m convinced this is one of the best ways to provide direct, grassroots aid within the region.
Since 2022, I have been working closely as a Trustee for the incredibly effective and community-driven charity, Refugee Biriyani & Bananas (RBB), led by Ruhi Akhtar. Since first meeting Ruhi in Chios in 2017, I have been consistently impressed by her team’s aid distributions to refugees and asylum-seekers in Greece, and previously in Kurdistan, Ukraine and Bosnia. Through RBB, people who are displaced decide themselves what’s most needed – be that sleeping bags, food, hygiene products or medical aid – and together with the organisation, they distribute consistently and equitably over many months.
At the outbreak of this tragic war, Palestinian members of the RBB community started organising to distribute dry and cooked food inside Gaza. Now they need our help to keep going as supplies dwindle and international aid struggles to get in.
The current conflict has been personally upsetting, after receiving news in October that the entire family of one of the previous volunteers I worked with for 2 years in Samos with Action for Education was killed in an airstrike.
As Ruhi has written: “Our teams have already started operating with first donations, and to date they have been able to provide dried food packs, fresh food items, water, cooked meals and baby products to 1000 people including families with young children in Rafah City, Khan Younis and Deir Al Balah.”
Please consider donating and sharing this appeal as widely as you can through email and social media – and please reach out to me if I can provide any more information as our distribution efforts continue. You can also find more detailed daily updates on the distributions and their impact on our Facebook page. Please note that UK donors can also benefit from Gift Aid to add 25% to your donation.
