(28 Dec 2023)
FOR CLEAN VERSION SEE STORY NUMBER: 4470317
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rafah, Gaza Strip - 25 December 2023
1. Various of dozens of children singing and dancing during volunteer team activities at Mawasi camp in Rafah
2. Various of children dancing and jumping
3. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Shorouq Taha, volunteer: ++PARTIALLY OVERLAID WITH SHOTS OF CHILDREN PLAYING++
“Playing with them is a very beautiful feeling. We are happy when we engage with them and provide support. Personally, I have started to play like them to release my own stress, and the children around me do the same. Inside me, there is also a significant amount of pressure, we were displaced from the north (of Gaza) to Khan Younis and then to the Rafah shelter center. We're trying to renew the energy within us and turn it into positive energy.“
4. Various of children playing with watercolors, printing their hands onto papers
STORYLINE:
A team of volunteers working in southern Gaza has come together to help displaced children at a refugee camp in Rafah overcome the trauma of war.
The volunteers, who are themselves displaced amid the Israel-Hamas war and come from different professional fields, have all had expertise working with young people.
The team's goal was to look after some 300 children in the Mawasi camp left without any protection or care and to focus on trauma relief through activities such as games, music, dancing, and circus performances.
“We came here with this initiative to alleviate the negative energy that entered the hearts of our children after the bombings, sorrow, and pain they have experienced," said Shorouq Taha, one of the volunteers.
"We are here to work to the best of our ability, utilizing a comprehensive team to organize activities aimed at bringing joy, happiness, and laughter to the children," she added.
Taha said that playing with the children helped release her own stress and cope better with the increasingly difficult situation after she was forced to leave her home in northern Gaza.
"Inside me, there is also a significant amount of pressure," she said. "Playing with them is a very beautiful feeling."
Cherine al-Faqawi, a mother of three who joined the camp activities, said she had seen the positive impact it had had on her children.
“They are quite comfortable here through songs and play, this relieved them and their psyche," she said.
The Israeli military on Wednesday expanded its ground offensive in the Gaza Strip to the densely populated urban refugee camps in the central part of the territory.
Rafah, which lies on the southern border with Egypt and has seen thousands of IDPs arrive seeking refuge, has been continuously hit with airstrikes during the course of the war.
Much of northern Gaza was pounded to rubble weeks ago.
More than 20,900 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed since the start of the war, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead.
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1 янв 2024
