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 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