Jerusalem24 – Poverty and its effects can be acutely felt during times of celebration, and making the slightest difference in someone’s life at such a moment can have a huge impact on their wellbeing.
During Ramadan, many initiatives try to provide families with all they will need to enjoy the Holy Month.
One such initiative is United in Humanity (UIH), a non-profit registered in the US and whose volunteers provide meat and food packages to struggling families in Palestine to last them the whole month of Ramadan.
UIH’s Ramadan Campaign has been running for eight years.
A personal journey
In addition to Palestine, UIH operates in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, and Syria, and runs many programs in addition to its annual Ramadan Campaign.
Despite its wide international reach, the beginnings of the organization are rooted in the personal journey of its’ co-founder and president, Fatimah Awad.
“Me as a Palestinian-American, to be honest with you I had no idea how life was in Palestine,” Fatimah tells Jerusalem24. “How much people struggled related to the occupation, related to everything.”
Fatimah came to Palestine for the first time in 2020 in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. Apart from a two-month visit back to the US, she has been living in Palestine since, even opening a clinic in Ramallah (Sculptra Aesthetic & Medical) two years ago.
While she was still living in the US, Fatimah took in a Gazan child named Waseem. He stayed with her for six months while undergoing treatment for his legs, and he used to talk to her about living in a refugee camp.
She decided to visit Khan Younis refugee camp as soon as the young boy was set to return to Gaza.
“I was just in shock,” Fatimah says. “I had no idea this was going on in Palestine. I was devastated at the state of poverty.”
While UIH targets the wider Levant region, targeting places and people who need help (medical, financial, or even psychological), Fatimah says they put special care their projects aimed at Palestinians, whom Fatimah thinks are underserved by existing NGOs.
“We have a lot of non-profits, and nobody cares about the Palestinians,” she says.
Anybody can volunteer
Fatimah is passionate about her humanitarian mission, and believes anybody can make it their own. “Anybody can volunteer; we are a group of volunteers.”
“We recruit medical doctors, pharmacists, photographers,” she enumerates. “We go to these areas that need help, setting up urgent care clinics to provide medical care and humanitarian aid.”
This year’s Ramadan Campaign in Palestine will specifically target Nablus and Jenin in the occupied West Bank “because of everything that has been happening there.”
“We want to provide them support, and let them know we do care and we are standing with them.”
Listen to the full interview on Vibes.
https://soundcloud.com/24fmpalestine/vibes-fatmih-awad-26-3?si=6fa5258a3ba64b38ac5813eb1282b1e4
