She Stands: Gaza

Nour Alsaqqa always saw the world through colours and composition. A creative soul by nature, she studied Radio, Television, and Film abroad, chasing a dream that married her love for storytelling with visual expression. But nothing in her education could prepare her for what awaited her back home in Gaza. When she returned, she joined Mashareq, a media company she had long admired. Just two months into her job, everything changed. The genocide began. “Life stopped for a minute,” she says. “Everything I ever knew and believed in crashed and crushed me.” Struggling to cope with the helplessness that engulfed her, Nour made a shift into humanitarian work. It became her lifeline, her resistance. “Working in the humanitarian field is the only thing that makes sense to me,” she explains. Now, she is a communications officer at a leading medical organization, using her skills to document, to inform, and to fight back - one image, one word at a time. Nour’s work began with managing supplies a...

Program Officer, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) | Gaza Strip At just 26 years old, Serena Awad has already lived a lifetime’s worth of heartbreak, resilience, and responsibility. As a program officer at the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), her days before October 2023 were filled with hope. She worked on youth development programs, striving to build long-term opportunities for young people across Gaza. But when the war began, everything changed. Serena quickly found herself on the frontlines of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. With formal programming suspended, she shifted into emergency response, coordinating the delivery of aid, supporting displaced families, and conducting rapid needs assessments in some of the most devastated areas. There was no time to process the fear or personal loss. Like many aid workers in Gaza, Serena was displaced multiple times, often continuing her work under bombardment. The lines between professional duty and personal survival...