A fundraising campaign is helping Palestinian teenagers who visited Belfast on an exchange programme to escape the war in Gaza.
Students Rahaf Alkfarna, Yara Sabaa and Malak Zuhair were hosted by St Louise’s Comprehensive College in west Belfast in 2022 as part of a theatre exchange programme.
All of them have kept in touch with the school since October, with the Hamas attacks and ongoing retaliation from Israel displacing them from their homes.
Normal cross-border travel is suspended, but desperate citizens have resorted to paying private companies for safe passage.
Recent reports on the subject suggest the going rate is at least over £4,000 for an adult.
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St Louise’s art teacher, Máiréad Robb, hosted the group during their Belfast visit and currently raised over £4,000 through a fundraiser to help the families attempt to cross the border at Rafah and rebuild their lives.
“From October 2023, the lives of these children have changed forever,” she wrote.
“Their homes have been destroyed. Their schools bombed. There is widespread hunger and disease as the children have no food or clean water.
“Along with their families, the children have had to evacuate their homes and along with thousands of other Palestinian people are now displaced, taking shelter in tents in Rafah.
“There is no safe place in Gaza. As Israel continues its relentless bombardment of the Gaza Strip, the civilian death toll stands at over 30,000 people, 16,000 of whom were women or children.”
“Currently they are in desperate need of food and warm clothes. When this war is over they will need help and support to build their lives again. Every child needs to be safe and have dreams of a better future,” she said.
Loretta Harper, a mental health nurse from Co Down, had also hosted the pupils at her home in 2022 and has been helping with the fundraising efforts.
“We as a family stayed in contact with the children and teachers and have been horrified at how their lives have changed for ever,” she said.
Video messages from the teenagers include Rahaf giving a tour of a tent that has become her new family home and an emotional appeal from Malak.
Writing about her experience, Malak described how her home in the north of Gaza was destroyed by Israeli forces on the first day of the war in October.
“We miraculously survived the attack. My father, a doctor, lost his job when the occupation forces bombed the hospital where he worked in Beit Hanoun,” she said.
“The occupation forces forced us to evacuate from Gaza City to the southern Gaza Strip on foot, without allowing us to take any of our belongings.”
She added that her mother Roula was now struggling without medication for multiple sclerosis and high blood pressure.
“I love life, my family and friends and want to go to university to become a neurosurgeon so I can help my mum,” she said.
“The occupation has stolen my dreams, destroying my school. My friends have been killed and I am so sad.”
Further information on the fundraising campaign is available online at this location.