Project Summary
The children of Gaza are living through a war within a war. Beyond the bombing and displacement, they are enduring fear, anxiety, and the slow accumulation of psychological trauma that comes with growing up in a conflict zone. Rates of speech and hearing disorders among children have climbed sharply, while the services that would normally treat such problems — clinics, specialists, and the supply chains they depend on — have been driven out of operation. Many parents, overwhelmed by survival, do not know that early intervention can make a lasting difference.
GPAA’s day camp for orphaned children is our attempt to step into that gap. With simple tools, trained staff, and a stable daily routine, the camp works to address problems early — before they become lifelong burdens — and to give children a place where they are looked after, listened to, and treated as children.
Why this matters
After more than fourteen months of war, the situation for children in Gaza has become extraordinarily difficult. The attacks have not spared anyone — people, trees, and stones alike have been targeted — and the resulting conditions are harsh in ways that are hard to convey. On top of the bombing and the forced displacement, children have been hit especially hard. Thousands have been killed. Schools and the teachers who carried Palestinian identity from one generation to the next have been deliberately targeted, hollowing out the educational system as well as the people inside it.
In settings like this, mental health and psychosocial support are almost always treated as a lower priority than physical survival. That is understandable when food, water, and shelter are in short supply — but it is also short-sighted. The psychological wounds of this war, if left untreated, will affect Gaza for decades. Few institutions are currently positioned to provide urgent intervention for children, and that is the gap GPAA is working to fill.
The day camp also arrives at an important moment in the school calendar. Children in Gaza have now gone more than fourteen months without normal schooling. The camp is built around the idea that learning, structure, and emotional support should not wait until the war ends. We are providing a setting in which children can be prepared emotionally and academically for whatever comes next, and in which they can be supported — by trained adults, and by one another — through this period.
For orphaned children in shelters and displacement camps, the program is built around three pillars. First, awareness work with families: educating parents and caregivers about psychological warning signs, child development, and what they can do day to day. Second, direct therapeutic sessions for children showing signs of psychological or behavioral disorders, delivered by specialists in a stable setting. Third, structured and unstructured activities — lessons, games, art, sports — that recreate at least some of what a normal school year would provide, and that give children room to be kids again.
Our goal over time is to grow the program into an integrated center for orphaned children, offering comprehensive psychological, educational, and recreational services in the camps and shelters of central and western Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip. The need is enormous. The work is small in comparison — but it is real, it is reaching children today, and it is the kind of investment that pays back over a lifetime.