Hello, my name is Rawan. I am a 21 year old engineering student and I live in Northern Gaza with my family. Since the beginning of the war, we have been displaced more than 30 times and we have suffered from famine and illnesses. The situation has gotten better thanks to my campaign, but if I can’t get more donations, it will get worse again at the worst time, in the middle of winter.
✅️Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is ( #347 )✅️
I am here to ask for your help. Sharing my post and my campaign can mean that someone who can donate will see us. It can save our lives!
A lot of our money recently had to be spent on firewood and the few winter clothes we could afford. We still don’t have enough for everyone and we are still freezing, but we can’t afford to spend more money on this. You see, we have a rent to pay. $500 every single month for one room with no door or windows that shelters 10 of us in a destroyed house. We live amongst bugs and rodents, but it’s still the better option. We used to live in a school until it was bombed. That kind of shelter is too dangerous and so is sleeping on the streets, so we can’t afford to miss out on rent.
Then we also have to buy food, of course. I swear, I never in my life thought that food could become so expensive. When we have enough donations, we can have one meal a day. It used to be flour bread, but with the siege, flour has become too expensive again. All we can find is expired canned food that I refuse to eat because it makes me sick. When we get a lot of money, we buy a few vegetables for way too much money. In the picture below, we paid $80 for these two vegetables. We haven’t tasted fruits or meat for more than a year.
Because of the lack of vitamins, we all suffer from malnutrition. My grandmother now has to use a wheelchair and suffers from many conditions including high blood pressure. My mother was also diagnosed with high blood pressure recently and has a severe infection in her eye. I suffer from hypothyroidism which I can’t access treatment for anymore as well as a bacterial skin infection that feels like it’s burning my whole body, even spreading to my face, due to our living conditions and the polluted air and water. Medicines are a distant dream because we need to buy food and pay rent first.
My youngest sister Soso, who recently turned 4, also suffers from malnutrition and shock from seeing people get ripped apart by bombs multiple times. She cries from hunger at night as she blocks the sounds of bombs with her hands on her ears. It breaks me that I can’t provide her with her basic rights as a child. I don’t know how to explain it to her.
We recently had to spend about $2,000 on a portable battery because it was becoming increasingly harder to find ways to charge my phone, and without my phone I can’t access the little money we have or promote my campaign. It feels like an impossible situation where I have to spend $100 every time I am given $10. It is exhausting. I can’t see the end of it and my hard work isn’t paying, people always stop hearing me after a few days. I am extremely depressed. The only people donating lately are my friends and my family members abroad, but they can only give so much.
