Friendly Welcome Gaza: Ruth Hawthorn, Nikki Jeffcote & Sara Feilden

‘We’d like to hear from Friends with advice or relevant experience.’

It’s hard to watch from afar as events unfold in Palestine, and it’s not easy to know how to help. So when an opportunity came last autumn to help someone in Gaza in a practical, life-changing way, we were drawn to it. She was a seventeen-year-old who had been offered a university place in Paris, and is now settled with a host family in Paris. 

The father of her host family asked if we could offer similar help to someone else: he’d known Bashar for many years and spoke highly of him. We’re a small group, only three of us, from two Meetings in North West London. We had set up a community sponsorship group to settle a Syrian family in London. We thought that, with the support of our Area Meeting, and perhaps others, we could try now to help Bashar. We got in touch.

Bashar had an offer to do a Masters course at University College Dublin (UCD). Up until 7 October 2023, he’d built a career in Gaza as a web/mobile app designer, and a developer for humanitarian organisations. He’d started to apply for postgraduate courses when the war broke out.

Bashar and his wife, a former science teacher, have two young children. At the outbreak of the war their neighbourhood came under bombardment and they fled, taking nothing with them. For the following month they slept in the open at Al-Shifa Medical Complex, without shelter or blankets. When that came under attack, they fled again, walking over twenty kilometres to the south of Gaza City, where they secured a tent and spent their days searching for food and queueing for the bathroom. During this time they learned that their home had been completely destroyed, and Bashar’s laptop – which held all his ideas, plans and projects – had gone. 

In spite of the ceasefire, the family are still in difficulties. Bashar writes: ‘Winter conditions in Gaza are indeed very difficult, especially with the heavy rain and cold while living in tents, but we are doing our best to endure.’ The shelling has now started again. 

Bashar’s offer at UCD is for a Masters in Digital Innovation. He’d had offers from universities in Paris and in London, but Ireland still has a proud tradition of support for refugees. UCD is registered as a University of Sanctuary with bursaries for students like him.

We contacted a group of Friends in Dublin with experience of supporting refugees. The UCD has a room for Bashar in a halls of residence so the next step is to apply for an Irish visa, which he needs to do by early May. All this will involve a considerable amount of fundraising, so it’s still precarious: even with all this work, it will also depend on Bashar’s successful evacuation from Gaza. This can’t be taken for granted.

We’d like to hear from Friends with advice or relevant experience. Our project for the Syrian family was called Friendly Welcome Camden; this new one is Friendly Welcome Gaza (www.friendlywelcome.org). Any donation through that website will go towards achieving Bashar’s goal – and if his plan falls through we’ll make sure the funds go on to help another student from Gaza. 

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Comments

Thank you for an interesting article about a graet project. I imagine you know of https://www.reuk.org/. UK based but perhaps providing some pointers and contact points?
Andrew West (Newark Meeting & Louth Churches for Refugees)

By Chris.wedge@outlook.com on 5th March 2026 - 11:35

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