@AhmedOuda You’re very welcome, Ahmed, but it wasn’t just from me and @joynewacc, it was from the nearly 400 people from the fediverse who love you and stand with you and who donated to our Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal fundraiser in the last week to help us raise over $40,000 for families evacuating North Gaza.

Know that you are welcome here, that you are seen, and that you are loved.

💕

#Gaza #Palestine #GazaVerified #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal

@joynewacc @abeerabed22 @AhmedOuda @salemgaza 🥳 @aseelfromgz and her family have arrived safely in the South.

They haven’t had a chance to put up their tent yet because the landowner is still picking the olives but they’re alive, safe, and well.

And it’s all thanks to your support.

Thank you!

💕

#GazaVerified #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #Gaza #Palestine #FreePalestine

Hi everyone,

This is my final impact report for the Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal

https://gaza-verified.org/emergecy/

The appeal is now over.

In total, we raised $40,200. Of that we distributed $39002.43 to 17 different families. The rest went to Stripe and Wise (see below for details).

One family was added today and one family was removed from the appeal for misrepresenting their location – they were from Gaza but displaced in Egypt, not displaced in the South as they told us. They got $1,200 of the money that was raised.

Our only expenses were currency conversion and Stripe instant payout fees (we did everything in USD as everyone talks in USD in Gaza. So we got hit by USD→EUR fees as fees came into our account and then EUR→USD before making payments. To add insult to injury some fundraisers were hosting in AUD, EUR, and GBP. We couldn’t use a USD pot in our Wise account to avoid the initial conversion fees as Stripe only offers instant payout on the primary currency.

Today, I withdrew all of the remaining money in Stripe, €5,658.71, which Wise converted to $6,598.07.

This was added to the USD pot in Wise that had $46.33 left from Day 5 (https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/115266523992016921) to give us a total of $6,644.40 to distribute.

We made a distribution plan with @joynewacc and paid out the following amounts:

• @abeerabed22: $2,000 so that her husband and the 7 families they are responsible for can get the tent and land they need complete their evacuation to the South. They were previously paid $3,000, bringing to the total received to $5,000.

• @aseelfromgz: $1,000 in addition to the $1,000 received previously so they can pay for unexpected expenses after paying more transportation that they had planned. They will hopefully be arriving safely in the South today (I know that they left, I haven’t had news from Aseel that they have arrived yet and I am going to breathe easier when I hear that they have).

• @AhmedOuda: $1,000 to help improve their tent.

• @salemgaza: The remaining amount, which was ~$4,019AUD. I had to eyeball the conversion to empty the pot and overshot a little so, in addition to emptying out the $2,632.01 USD pot, ~€4.27 was taken from our own foundation funds (we’ll survive although the accountants are not going to like me very much).

So we’ve now distributed all the money we had.

And the emergency appeal is over.

I want to stress again not only how grateful I am but how much of a change you have made in the lives of the Gaza Verified families.

Multiple families have completed their evacuations South thanks to you. Others are closer to their goals or have land and shelter where they did not before.

I look forward to sharing some of their stories with you in the coming days so you can see the impact of your love and support with your own eyes.

Thank you all so much.

I am going to go sleep a bit now.

Well, after I update the site to add this impact report to it… :)

💕

#GazaVerified #EmergencyAppeal #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #Gaza #Palestine #fediAid #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppealImpactReport

@joynewacc I’ve now ended the Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal

https://gaza-verified.org/emergency/

Thank you all so much for helping our Gaza Verified families with the evacuations South.

This doesn’t mean that the emergency situation in Gaza is over. Quite on the contrary, things are getting worse every hour. And there are more friends from Palestine entering the fediverse looking for help.

We are going to focus on verifying them and boosting their voices and their individual campaigns.

And you can do so by following them and helping them personally (see https://gaza-verified.org for links to their accounts).

Also, others, like the inspirational @divya have ongoing campaigns to help families in their circle that you can contribute to:

https://sunny.garden/@divya/115282517168973531

I will write up a final impact report after we’ve distributed these latest funds.

And I will share some of the stories of our families who have been able to move South because of your help in the coming days.

Words cannot express how grateful I am to you for your continued support in helping our families in Gaza survive genocide.

Thank you!

💕

#GazaVerified #EmergencyAppeal #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #Gaza #Palestine #fediAid

@joynewacc Thank you so much, we’ve reached our goal!

💕

#GazaVerified #EmergencyAppeal #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #Gaza #Palestine #fediAid

@joynewacc Hi everyone,

This is my final push for the Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal.

We are $474 away from our final goal of $40,000.

https://gaza-verified.org/emergency/

This little remaining amount will actually make a difference in being able to help one more family today, so if you can, please support us this one last time for this campaign and let’s hit that final goal.

Thank you!

💕

#GazaVerified #EmergencyAppeal #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #Gaza #Palestine #fediAid

@joynewacc TL; DR: We are ending the Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal today, after a week.

If you have any final donations you wish to make, please do so in the next few hours.

https://gaza-verified.org/emergency/

All final monies raised (minus Stripe withdrawal fees and Wise currency conversion fees), like the $32,370 already distributed, will be going to Gaza Verified families evacuating to the South who still have unmet needs.

Thank you again for your amazing support this week and I look forward to sharing with you the final impact report as well as some of the stories of the families that your humanity has helped.

💕

#GazaVerified #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal

@joynewacc Hi all,

Here’s today’s Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal Impact Report for Day 5:

Today, the $455.50 we had in the USD pot in Stripe that we were waiting for finally got transferred to our bank account.

To add to that, we got a $500 donation via bank transfer.

This morning, I withdrew €951.63 from the Stripe donation pot, clearing it. That got converted to $1,108.09.

Since the amount wasn’t enough for the two payments I wanted to make, I pushed the campaign a bit and you all responded like the absolute gems you are and I managed to withdraw another €794.51 from the pot. From this amount, I took the €200 we’d lent to yesterday’s payments from our own funds, bringing the total to €594.51. This got converted to $691.15.

So the total we had in the USD pot at the end of this was: $455.50 + $500 + $1,108.09 + $691.15 = $2,754.74.

From this, I also deducted the USD amount ($108.41) we had temporarily lent from our own funds yesterday so we could make the payments.

This left us with $2,646.33 to distribute today to:

• @ahmedosama: $600 for land, in addition to the $600 for a tent we had sent earlier.
• @mohshbair: $2,000 for the remainder of transportation, land, and tent so they can evacuate South.

And, with that, we have paid out all the amounts that everyone in our 16 families had told us they needed from the start of the campaign on Saturday.

We currently have $46.33 left in our USD bank account.

I just checked Stripe and with new donations that have come in since my last withdrawal, we have €891.47 in there.

And the state of the campaign in general right now is that we have raised $34,233 out of our revised goal of $35,000 in the last five days and we have distributed $32370.42 to our 16 families to help them escape the bombs in the North to relative safety in the South.

This feels like a milestone.

We added four new families to Gaza Verified today and at least three of them are either trapped in the North or have family that is. I’m asking them for their needs now.

I’m leaving the goal at $35,000 for the moment but, as always, the more we have in the pot, the better we can respond to the needs of our families, so please keep sharing and helping out if you can.

Once we have the latest list of needs from our new families (and perhaps additional ones from our current ones), Joy and I will come up with a plan for evolving the campaign and the site. I am thinking we might archive the current week and start on a new week, again with singular focus on our families that need the most help in surviving Israel’s genocide in the here and now.

Words cannot express how much I love you all for stepping up and showing your love and solidarity for our families in Gaza and for welcoming them so warmly and with such humanity to the fediverse.

Thank you.

You give me hope.

💕

#GazaVerified #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppealImpactReport #Gaza #Palestine #fediAid

🥳

More donations have come in and we’ve hit our goal for today to pay @ahmedosama the $600 he needs for land to complete putting up his tent in the South and @mohshbair the $2,000 he needs to escape Israel’s bombs in the North to the relative safety of the South.

Thank you so much!

I will be making the payments shortly and will file my impact report for today (the fifth day of our fundraising) as always.

Heads up: we have new members coming and nearly all are either in the North themselves or have family in Gaza that are. We are gathering their needs today and I will update you (and the site) when we have a better idea of the current state of the campaign. Please do keep sharing and donating if you can as we will need a considerable sum in the coming days and the more there is in the pot, the faster we can help.

https://gaza-verified.org/emergency/

You have no idea how much I appreciate your support for our families in Gaza.

💕

#GazaVerified #EmergencyAppeal #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #Gaza #Palestine #fediAid