Tenderness in Time of Hardness: Leen

 Her name is Leen; a name that means softness, gentleness. And she has spent her life trying to live up to it, even in Gaza, where life rarely offers softness. She chose a path where her tenderness could become strength: working as a Protection and Women’s Empowerment Officer with the International Rescue Committee. “I try to live up to my name,” she says. “That’s why I choose spaces where I can help people, be gentle with them, and give them hope.”

In the crowded camps, where women rise each morning to endless chores, fetching water, kneading dough, tending fires, Leen builds spaces that breathe hope. She recruits and trains women to be community facilitators, turning pain into purpose, displacement into leadership. Her pride lies in the fifteen women she has mentored, who now sustain their families while serving their own communities. “Every one of them is a story of resilience,” she explains. “Each one gives, even in the hardest times.”

But Leen is more than a humanitarian worker, she is also a writer. Through the war, she filled page after page: sometimes recounting what her eyes had seen, sometimes writing her own wounds, sometimes carrying the stories of others. “People told me they saw themselves in my words,” she says. “That’s why I write, to make us feel less alone.”

The war has transformed her work. What once was about culture, small youth projects, and dreams, has been stripped down to the basics: food, water, psychosocial support. Her office is now a tent, her days spent in searing heat or bitter cold. Still, she insists there is always strength in women and she helps them see it. “I don’t want them just to survive,”she says firmly, “but to blossom, even in war.”

Her work has also expanded to children. “Now I work with Child Protection too,” she explains. “Children need more than psychosocial support. They need a sense of routine, a way to express themselves, to play, to dream. That’s what I try to create in the camps.”

There are moments that weigh heavy, when the sky drones with danger and every step carries the possibility of death. “Working on the frontlines means putting your soul in your hands,” she admits. “You might leave home and never return. But you keep going, just to ease someone else’s suffering.”

Yet there are also moments of light that stay with her. She remembers the day a teenage girl, asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, replied: “I want to be Leen.” That single sentence carried enough hope to keep her going for years. “When they told me, I felt the universe could not contain my joy,” she recalls. “That is the butterfly effect I dream of; to plant a spark of hope that makes someone look to tomorrow.”

Her secret survival strategy is simple: the power of moments. A smile, a parcel delivered, a safe space opened, the small gestures that may seem fleeting but are, in truth, lifelines. “I continue for the sake of the moment,” she says. “Because a single good moment can change an entire day.”

These safe spaces she creates are, in her words, “almost impossible.” Life in the camps leaves women drowning in endless responsibilities, but in the spaces she builds, they breathe, reconnect with themselves, and imagine solutions instead of only problems.

She does not see herself as a hero. “But every woman who tries under these conditions is one,” she says softly. “From what I see every day, Gaza is carried on the shoulders of women.”

And when asked what she hopes for, her answer is heartbreakingly simple: not aid, not programs, just ordinary life. “I hope for a tomorrow beyond humanitarian responses,” she says. “I miss Gaza’s ordinary days, with all their imperfect beauty.”

If she had one minute to speak to the world, she would strip away every stereotype and show the truth: “We are not only the images of suffering you see. We are ordinary people, and we long to live with dignity.”