Who We Are…

Helping Children in Gaza is a group of concerned members from the diplomatic community residing in Palestine. The purpose of the group is to raise awareness and generate funding for the most vulnerable children in Gaza who have been heavily affected by the on-going crisis. 

Our fundraising page made possible by PCRF, was established for the purpose of facilitating hundreds of children in Gaza to attend Summer Camps organised by the Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF).  Every donation made will go directly to PCRF Summer Camps Project schedule for 2015.

For every $8,000 dollars,  PCRF can send 160 children in Gaza to Summer Camps. The cost for the Gaza Summer Camps includes: Transportation, Food and Activity Related items.  All staff are volunteers.  Some activities included at the Summer Camps are:

• Art therapy is meant to help children in expressing their feelings, thoughts, fears, problems and hopes. Through drawing, painting and story writing workshops, PCRF aim to help these children release their stress and traumatic experiences, to express themselves and their vision of the occupation.

• Yoga therapy is an established form of healthcare that is used to promote well-being and to alleviate stress or pain, as well as to cope with communication difficulties, emotional trauma, memory loss and physical rehabilitation.

• Media workshops will make the children aware of the invaluable opportunity to communicate and exchange ideas. They will learn how to break through the physical and social barriers that isolate them and will thus become part of the global community.

• Sports and team-building games help children develop teamwork skills, self-confidence, resiliency, moral character, communication, decision-making and problem-solving skills. To succeed at team-building games, children have to learn to work together, listen carefully, communicate clearly and think creatively.

On Saturday the 31^st of January, 2015, Helping Children in Gaza and the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF) will be hosting the Jerusalem Evening Gala at St. George Event Hall & Convention Center in East Jerusalem (Salah e Din street) in order to raise funds for children in Gaza to attend Summer Camps, organised by PCRF. The Gala Dinner will gather representatives and ambassadors residing in Jerusalem and Ramallah as well as members of the Palestinian private sector.  Mr. Munib Al-Masri co-founder and chairman of the Palestine Development and Investment Company (Padico) will be the keynote speaker during the event, Steve Sosebee, president and CEO of PCRF will discuss the organisation’s humanitarian work.

To buy your tickets online please press here or send us an email to helpingchildreningaza@gmail.com and we will make sure to deliver them to you.

Join us and send as many children as possible to PCRF Summer Camps next year!  We thank you for your kind donation and support.

  Gina Lund                     Shirley de Leon            Syntia Romero     

       Loreto del Rio              Mandisa Baptiste

ABOUT PCRF SUMMER CAMPS

In 2001, the PCRF started a new project to sponsor summer camps for handicapped children throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip in cooperation with local NGOs. The purpose of these camps is to not only give disadvantaged children summer activities that enable them to enjoy life and their childhood, but also to integrate disabled youths with those who do not endure such physical issues, as each camp has a high percentage of children with physical disabilities.

Since 2001, the PCRF has held over 70 summer camps and has hosted roughly 7,000 children with many more camps planned for the future.

PCRF GAZA SUMMER CAMP JUNE 2014 / Photos by Abdelazeez Noman

On June 7th 2014, the Al Samood summer camp in Deir El Balah, central Gaza Strip, began for one week with 65 children, aged from to 4 to 15  participating 25 of which were with special needs.The camp started with an orientation and welcoming with a distribution of uniform and training on the special summer camp song.Numerous activities and workshops were organized for the kids to learn by playing and to develop interaction with others; hence to enhance their self confidence and allow them to participate confidently in multiple social contexts.The activities of the 2014 Gaza Summer Camp were: Drawing on glass and pottery ; making puppets and stereophonic with sponge and gypsum; stories telling; Dabka dance; swimming; games; field trips etc.
 

Building a Pediatric Oncology and Hematology Department For the Children of the Gaza Strip                                       Project Objective:
The object of this project is to establish the first and only public pediatric cancer department to serve the children in the besieged Gaza Strip. The location of this freestanding department will be on the fourth floor of the main pediatric specialized hospital in Gaza City. The project objective is to build a department that will have the material and technical infrastructure to provide expert medical and social care for children who require short and longterm in and day patient care in both oncology and hematology.

The project is needed because there are a large number of children in Gaza who are suffering from different forms of cancer, and their lack of access to medical services both within and outside of the Gaza Strip has strained families, the local health care system, as well as the budget of the ministry of health. Cancer is the second cause of death in Gaza, after cardiac disease, and the lack of a specialized department there to provide adequate care for children only contributes to this high mortality rate.

Project Location:
The project will be built on the top floor of the Pediatric Specialist Hospital for Children on Nasr Street in Gaza City. The hospital was built in 2003 and officially opened on April, 2008, with a capacity of 45 beds. (It will have 100 beds when fully operational.) The hospital currently consists of three floors and the proposed project occupies 2400 m2 . In addition, the ground floor of the hospital provides medical services by receiving patients from all areas of the Gaza Strip, which has a population of over seven hundred thousand children. The hospital consists of several sections: gastrointestinal, pulmonary, kidney disease, neurology, cardiology, endocrinology, and intensive care unit (ICU), hematology and oncology, an outpatient clinic, dialysis, endoscopy, laboratory and a blood bank, radiology, a pharmacy and physical therapy.

The PCRF is a legally-registered non-political, non-profit, 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization established in 1991 by concerned people to address the medical and humanitarian needs of Palestinian and Arab youths in the Middle East. We have provided thousands of children life-saving care based on their need, not on religion, gender, nationality or sect.

The main objective of the PCRF is to identify and treat every child in the Middle East in need of specialized surgery not available to them locally. We locate, sponsor and run international, volunteer medical missions to the Middle East, in additional to locating free medical care abroad for children who cannot be adequately treated in the Middle East. The PCRF  is the main organization regularly sending injured and sick Arab children to North and South America, the Middle East and Europe for free care that is not available to them there. Since 1991 over 1,000 children have been abroad for millions of dollars of donated care, and over 10,000 have had complex surgery by our visiting medical missions to the region. The PCRF has been awarded the top 4-star rating by Charity Navigator for fiscal management, while being able to treat more kids than any other charity in the Middle East.