Impact update: Emergency support to Gaza

Our emergency response support to Gaza is providing vital cash, food, water and sanitation facilities to desperate families. Thank you for your generous donations; your support ensures this work can happen.

The ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza is now entering its tenth month. It has obliterated normal life in Gaza.

Destruction of the civil infrastructure, homes, educational institutions, hospitals, means that upwards of 90% of the population of Gaza has been displaced—1.9m people.¹ Continued air and ground attacks on civilian areas have killed at least 37,953 people among them 15,000 children.² Many more tens of thousands are injured and orphaned, or missing. Deliberate starvation on a mass scale, and restriction or destruction of drinking water infrastructure, affects not just people’s health in the immediate context but will have long-lasting impacts on their physical and mental health.

We are working with our steadfast partners on the ground in Gaza to deliver emergency response activities. These focus on cash distribution, provision of essential food and water supplies, and urgent support to hygiene and sanitation needs.

Cash distribution

Thanks to your amazing support, our partners at the Canaan Institute of Pedagogy, Issa Saba (pictured here in the beige polo shirt) and Zaher Hania, are distributing urgently-needed cash. To date, more than 600 vulnerable families across Gaza have received this urgent cash, reaching a total of more than 3,000 people.

These families are displaced from their homes, living in tents or temporary shelters in hospitals or schools, who may also be living with chronic diseases.

With the emergency funds, they can buy the limited food and water supplies available, or other necessities such as hygiene supplies, or medicines.

Food and water

One meal for one person now costs an average of £2/$2.50. The cost of food and water has increased many-fold over the past nine months. Now, food prices are at a level that the vast majority of the people in Gaza could not ever afford.

Emergency cash distribution is, for many, the difference between getting food to eat and water to drink, or simply having to go without. Thank you to everyone who has given generously to ensure that families can buy food and water.

Our Canaan Institute partners Issa and Zaher are also leading emergency food and potable water provision. They are making potable water deliveries to neighbourhoods and communities cut off from mains water and electricity in north Gaza. Between March and June 2024, the team reached more than 10,000 people with clean water supplies in Gaza City, Shati, and Maghazi camps.

The food distribution they are running reaches families on the brink of starvation because of sky-high inflation of food prices. A bread-making facility in the north of Gaza now serves those communities, and they are distributing pastries and other food items directly to desperate families elsewhere in camps.

Hygiene and sanitation

The devastating aerial bombing and ground attacks damage and destroy water and waste management systems.

This means people have no access to safe, clean drinking water, or a clean and sanitary place to go to the toilet. Flooding or extreme heat exacerbates these issues and causes diseases to spread rapidly.

Hope and Play donations are supporting a group of plumbers who travel between communities to ensure that the few still-functioning toilets are clean and in good working order. These toilets are serving thousands of people. The plumbers can identify issues, buy parts or tools, and fix any problems so that people have a safe and hygienic place to go to the toilet.

To date, the team has maintained 18 toilets across three shelters in Magazi camp, which serve more than 2,000 people. Work is ongoing on the water drainage pipes at Gaza Zaytoun School where 1,500 people are sheltering.