School and healthcare despite the bombs: this is how “Sources of Peace” keeps a flame of hope alive in Gaza

Its very name sounds like a utopia in these times of daily extermination. Yet the small association “Fonti di pace” challenges the bombings and hunger to keep a flame of hope alight. And it recalls a phrase by Nelson Mandela: “Peace is a dream, it can become reality… But to build it you have to be able to dream”. Silvana Barbieri, the soul of the organization founded in Milan in 2005 “by a group of people from different professional backgrounds, who unanimously decided to want to make an active contribution, on a voluntary basis, to the development of international cooperation and to support activities for particularly disadvantaged populations and social groups”, tells us about it. Over the past 20 months, the Odv has focused above all on supporting the tormented Palestinian population.

What have you managed to do in the Gaza Strip?

“From June to November, thanks to the 8X1000 funding from the Waldensian Church and the collaboration of our partner Palestinian medical relief society, we implemented the project 'Emergency humanitarian intervention. Relief for the wounded'. The project's work areas were to be the governorates of Khan Yunis and Rafah. The continuous attacks by the Israeli army and the invasion of the occupation forces in the Rafah Governorate forced our local partner to operate in the tent cities and shelters of the displaced in Khan Yunis. A team composed of a general practitioner, nurse, rehabilitator and psychologist took charge of 418 wounded discharged from the El Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis when they still needed treatment. The team, with great difficulty due to armed attacks and destroyed roads, visited the wounded for 5 months in the places where they were displaced, tent cities, UNRWA schools and among the rubble of bombed houses. A total of 2,745 services were provided. Today, even this is no longer possible, but it is not we have given up on supporting the exhausted population".

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What are the conditions you operate under?

“Continuous bombings, collapsing infrastructure, and the near-total lack of food and healthcare have made daily life a struggle for survival. Hunger is used as a weapon. There is no access to protein and carbohydrates; fruits and vegetables are almost unobtainable and extremely expensive. Malnutrition is widespread, especially among children, and people with chronic diseases such as cancer and diabetes face a fatal shortage of medicines with deadly consequences.”

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And what activities do you manage to carry out?

“Fonti di Pace, thanks to the local partner Social media club Palestine, has been carrying out educational activities for some time in the tent school set up after the families were moved from Deir Balah, in the governorate of Gaza City-Shaty Camp. We work with groups of children, currently supporting 40 aged between 6 and 9. They are children who have never started school or who have lost two full years of education due to aggression and forced evacuations. Civilians in Gaza are suffering repeated displacement due to continuous evacuation orders and intense and indiscriminate bombing. Families are forced to abandon their homes, often several times, taking with them only what they can, with no guarantee of safety wherever they go. Entire neighborhoods are being emptied, the entire Rafah area, Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahyia, the Jabalia camp, the village of Um El Nasser. Schools, which are normally places of learning, are being transformed into emergency shelters, which however do not guarantee any safety, as we had to witnessed for the umpteenth time in recent days, when a school was bombed, causing dozens of casualties. This ongoing uprooting is tearing apart the fabric of daily life and leaving people, especially children, traumatized and in fear. Our team faces daily challenges in carrying out the activities of the tent school, given that no place is safe due to the constant air strikes; we deal with severe restrictions on movement and lack of means of transport, continuous waves of displacement that interrupt the regular attendance of children at the tent school, physical exhaustion and psychological pressure. Nevertheless, the team of teachers is committed every day to planting seeds of hope and knowledge in children who live surrounded by destruction and trauma”.

For two months, no food, water, or medicine has entered Gaza. And the children of the Strip are exhausted

In what other areas of the world does Sources of Peace operate besides Palestine?

“Over the years we have carried out support projects in various countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, without forgetting Italy and the province of Milan itself, where we have committed to guaranteeing the rights of migrants. But the population to which we are most attached is the Kurdish one. Sources of Peace was born in 2005 precisely from the desire to defend the rights of this people - persecuted and massacred for over a century after their territory was divided between Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran - who, just like the Palestinians, do not give up the dream of self-determination and a strip of land in which to live in peace. In exchange for the promise of obtaining all this, thousands of Kurds did not hesitate to give their lives to fight ISIS, and were instrumental in its defeat. But the West, having achieved its objective, once again went back on its word. The recent invitation by the leader of the PKK Abdullah Ocalan to cease the armed struggle and lay down their weapons opens up new prospects that are yet to be evaluated”.