It’s been a very busy 6 months of travelling so I’m looking forward to sharing those stories with you soon.
One of those assignments was to Gaza. I’d been to Gaza a few times over the years but was shocked and appalled by the level of destruction following the 2014 war. Whole suburbs of densely populated districts had been levelled, often with great loss of life.
Wherever you went there were signs of the conflict. There were individual buildings demolished in streets in a seemingly arbitrary way. I met medical staff and their families whose houses had been destroyed and they had no idea why. It is hard to imagine what it must have been like to be there during those 51 days of violence. The complete random nature of the bombing must have been terrifying.
One of the consequences of this and the reason for my visit was to report on the effect this has had on children. One year after the war, UNICEF states that over 300,000 children need psychosocial counselling to overcome their trauma. The scale of the problem and the long term consequences if nothing is done seems immense. The following story introduces some of those affected by the war and the efforts of a dedicated group of counsellors helping heal them.
Many thanks to Act for Peace for the assignment, Ebaa, an amazing and patient translator, all the staff at the NECC clinic and the people of Gaza who showed nothing but the warmest hospitality and resilience in the most difficult of situations.
The story is best viewed on a larger screen as many of the images are full frame and wait for the video clips to load…thanks…