Jan, 2023
In 1984, Anera’s Gaza City office opened with three staff members. It is still at the same location today, but with 17 staff members. From that location, the team manages water and sanitation, education, healthcare, economic development, and humanitarian relief projects throughout Gaza.
Gaza City is one of five governorates in Gaza. It is the largest population center in Palestine, with over 600,000 residents. The city is at least 4,000 years old and was originally situated on a hill located inland. Now it extends to the Mediterranean and encompasses about 17 square miles – about the size of Hartford, Connecticut, but with five times the population.
Gaza City and the whole of Gaza have experienced waves of invaders, conquerors and traders who have traveled through, built up and/or destroyed the area. They all have left their traces on Gaza’s culture and history. In times of peace and stability, Gaza City was a flourishing port and a center of education, frequented by intellectuals. The city is currently home to four universities.
In 1984, Anera’s Gaza City office opened with three staff members. It is still at the same location today, but with 17 staff members. From that location, the team manages water and sanitation, education, healthcare, economic development, and humanitarian relief projects throughout Gaza.
Agriculture in Gaza City
Anera’s projects in the 1980s and 1990s focused quite a bit on agriculture, a major source of livelihood in the region.
In the early 1990s, Anera built a new slaughterhouse in Gaza City to replace the old one, which was originally established at the time of the British mandate. In the same decade, Anera built a wholesale market for farmers to store and sell their produce directly to restaurants and other businesses. In 1993, Anera provided fishing supplies and an ice-making machine to Tawfiq Fishing Cooperative and laboratory equipment to the Gaza Union of Citrus Providers. Also in the early 1990s, Anera gave a grant to the Gaza Livestock Cooperative so they could establish a mobile clinic for veterinary service.
Our current agricultural project in Gaza City is installing rooftop gardens on homes – small greenhouses filled with planting beds that draw water from below the soil. Anera’s agronomist in Gaza hopes to put one of these gardens on every Gaza rooftop.
Water and Sanitation (WASH) in Gaza City
Water access and infrastructure have long been a challenge in Gaza. Anera’s major funding for water and sanitation over the years has come from USAID and Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA).
Anera’s WASH Work with USAID Funding
Most of the rain that falls on Gaza discharges into sea without replenishing the aquifer or benefiting farms and families. Throughout the 1980s, with USAID funding, Anera engineers stepped in to conserve and make wise use of rainfall in the urban environment of Gaza City. They designed a system to channel rainwater into a retaining pool, preventing flooding and diverting the water to irrigate farms and to replenish the depleted underground aquifer. This massive project took many years to complete. It had a profound impact on businesses homes that no longer suffered from devastating floods every year.
In the first decade of the 2000s, Anera implemented five WASH projects in Gaza City with the support of USAID, including repairing a water and sewage network in the Sha'af area and installing a stormwater drainage system in the Yarmouk area. Anera also supplied and installed a power generator for the main sewage treatment plant and replaced damaged water and sanitation equipment for the Gaza City municipality.
In 2008, again with USAID funding, Anera renovated and upgraded Al Quds Hospital, which is owned and operated by Palestinian Red Crescent Society. This vital healthcare facility in Gaza City treats more than 150,000 patients every year. Anera rehabilitated surgery rooms and the intensive care unit, and significantly improved sanitation conditions in the hospital toilets and patient wards in addition to increasing accessibility to potable water for patients, medical teams and visitors.
Anera’s WASH Work with IRUSA Funding
IRUSA has been supporting Anera's water and sanitation work in Gaza since 2014. Projects improve safe and sustainable access to water and sanitation services, and reduce the risk of flooding, pollution and pathogen contamination in poor communities across Gaza.
In Gaza City alone, Anera has implemented 17 water-related projects with IRUSA funding. Anera’s water network interventions improved connections at the household level in seven Gaza City neighborhoods. Now families have stronger and more reliable water access in their homes. To mitigate the health and environmental damage of sewage, Anera rehabilitated eight underground tunnel systems for transporting sewage, removing wastewater from homes throughout Gaza City and pumping it to facilities for treatment.
To help increase the capacity of Gaza’s aquifer, Anera renovated the stormwater basin in Asqula, which serves 100,000 residents of six communities in Gaza City. The basin was built some 35 years ago and it is in bad shape. According to Gaza municipal reports, only 10% of rainwater now filters down into the aquifer because of the poor permeability of the soil layers currently in the basin to clean the water as it goes into the aquifer. Anera removed the dirt and debris that clogged the basin, replaced the current top layer of dirt with a new layer of sand, and dug 35 new boreholes to feed the aquifer with filtered rainwater. The new boreholes and clean layer of sand add ~65,000 gallons a day to the aquifer during the rainy season.
Reverse Osmosis Desalination Systems
One of the ways Anera is combating Gaza’s water crisis is through the installation of reverse osmosis desalination units at healthcare facilities, schools and other community meeting points. Reverse osmosis is a water treatment process that removes contaminants from water by using pressure to force water molecules through a semipermeable membrane. During this process, the contaminants are filtered out and flushed away, leaving clean drinking water.
“These [reverse osmosis] systems are a quick and effective solution to the problem of accessing potable water,” says Sami Mater, an Anera engineer in Gaza. “They are easy to make and to install. A company in Gaza City manufactures them. It's an impressive, high tech facility and they have in stock all of the materials they need to to produce the systems."
Anera has installed reverse osmosis systems at 12 Gaza City locations and counting. The systems serve thousands of patients, students and community members as they are accessible to everyone in densely populated areas across Gaza. Solar panels power the systems, ensuring the sustainability of this intervention during frequent power cuts and saving organizations from investing in running expensive generators.
Education in Gaza City
High levels of stress and anxiety negatively affect the healthy growth and development of young people. In Gaza, run-down and overcrowded classrooms are not suited for learning and outdated materials make it difficult for students to keep up with their peers. Anera’s education projects, from preschool to college, include infrastructure upgrades and new builds, teacher training, psychosocial support and more.
From 1980 to 2010, Anera’s scholarship program supported schools in Palestine, Lebanon and Jordan. The Society for the Care of the Handicapped Children in Gaza City was an early member of the program. And one of the most beloved of the scholarship schools was the Atfaluna Society for the Deaf in Gaza City. The school opened its doors in 1993 and Anera was there right from the beginning. Atfaluna provides a wide range of vital services for deaf children and adults. Initially Anera’s scholarship program supported the school with grants. Anera also upgraded the audiology and speech therapy center and later expanded the computer and science lab, resource library and multimedia computer room.
Early childhood development is Anera’s flagship education program across Palestine. With funds from institutional donors like Dubai Cares and thousands of individuals, Anera has renovated dozens of preschools in Gaza City. Upgrades have improved building infrastructure, sanitation systems, furnishings, playground facilities and availability of resources like books and toys. Teachers at the schools attend training sessions on child development, child rights, learning theories, safety, classroom organization, expressive arts, play and more.
Two Gaza City schools Anera has long supported are the Rosary Sisters School and the Right to Live Society. Anera’s relationship with both has spanned nearly a decade. At the Rosary School in the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood, Anera constructed a three-story building with 11 classrooms and a computer lab. More recently we added a new floor with five additional classrooms, two teacher rooms, a handicap-accessible bathroom unit, and centralized A/C units. There is now an elevator so the school is fully accessible for persons with disabilities. The school now can accommodate students from first grade through to high school graduation.
“We are working to build a generation with the slogan ‘we read as our ancestors read.’ This project has a great impact, and the construction of the additional floor has contributed to the development of education in Gaza.” – Sister Nabila Saleh, Principal of the Rosary Sisters School in Gaza.
Anera has improved conditions at the Right to Live Society, located in Shejaiya. The society provides a host of services and activities for about 750 children with Down syndrome and autism. In partnership with Playgrounds for Palestine, in 2011, Anera installed a new playground made from materials that came from recycled metals available inside Gaza. After the bombings of 2014, which badly impacted the whole Shejaiya neighborhood and the society specifically, Anera renovated damaged water and sanitary facilities and installed a water desalination unit. And, more recently, Anera erected an entirely new two-story building for the society.
Anera’s support for education in Gaza City extends into the college level too. In the early 1980s Anera helped establish the Arab Nursing College in Gaza City and the West Bank. In 2022, Anera installed a reverse osmosis desalination system at Al-Azhar University, providing clean water for students to drink at the tap.
Inaugurated in 2008, the Gaza Music School was established in response to a growing demand for music education voiced by parents and children in Gaza. It has since opened opportunities for children to grow and be exposed to a variety of cultures through the international language of music. Anera has supported the school since the beginning with financial grants and providing instruments. In the wake of the 2008-09 bombing, we delivered two new Yamaha pianos to replace instruments that were damaged.
Community Development in Gaza City
Anera’s community development programs improve family livelihoods by creating hundreds of work opportunities in construction, sewing, cooking, health promotion, humanitarian response, education, and more. We help women entrepreneurs start and build up small businesses that support whole families. Sports programs and facilities offer youth from different backgrounds the chance to interact and learn teamwork. Parks and playgrounds give families beautiful, safe places to come together and socialize.
In the early 1990s, Anera gave grants to organizations that provided a variety of services for community development. For instance, in Gaza City, Anera gave a series of grants to the Women's Cooperative for Sewing and Handicrafts so they could purchase new equipment and train women in sewing and handicrafts; the Community Child Development Society to build their capacity to better assist children with disabilities; and the Literacy Group Society to provide literacy training for men and women and vocational training for women.
Livelihoods in Gaza City
Anera created the Gaza Women’s Loan Fund in 1995 with the aim of helping low-income women launch small businesses to help sustain their families with small loans. And, in 2021, our Women Can program expanded from the West Bank to Gaza. The Fund has provided small loans to thousands of women entrepreneurs throughout Gaza, including in Gaza City. And the Women Can program provides women entrepreneurs with equipment, training and other support to make their dreams of establishing or growing businesses a reality. Seamstresses, grocers, farmers, artisans and many others are successfully running businesses that support their families and provide needed services to the community.
Infrastructure to Bring People Together in Gaza City
For decades Anera has worked with vital community centers that provide cultural, sporting and educational activities for children and families in Gaza City.
From the 1970s onwards, Anera has provided many different kinds of support to the YMCA in Gaza City, from renovating the library building to hosting summer camps. In the 2010s, the YMCA complex was in dire need of renovation. The number of children relying on their services has grown over the years, but the organization could not grow beyond its space. Anera constructed a new two-story building, a grassy playground, and stadium, making better use of the space available and increasing the number of activities and services delivered by the YMCA.
In 2011, Anera finished construction of a two-story building for the Arab Orthodox Cultural Center, an independent nonprofit that provides intellectual, artistic and social activities in Gaza City. The organization had constructed the skeleton of a building but could not complete construction due to a lack of funding. Now the AOCC has a beautiful new building and grounds where they can house their cultural and social events.
The Gaza Sports Club, established in 1934, is the largest and oldest sports club in Palestine. Before the PCID program’s intervention, the people of Gaza City lacked a proper and safe space to play sports or for recreational activities, and many would end up playing in the streets or less-safe public areas. Now, the club’s nearly 4,000 members have a safe and state-of-the-art athletic facility to play sports, socialize and interact with their peers. Anera’s massive overhaul in 2022 introduced two new soccer fields, tennis, volleyball and basketball courts, a running track, new seating areas, and a fully-renovated indoor sports hall.
Healthcare in Gaza City
Anera has a long history of delivering health projects in Gaza City, ranging from maternal and child health to improvements to health facility infrastructure.
From 2005 to 2008, Anera’s Hanan Project provided quality health and nutritional services for mothers and children in Gaza while promoting positive household and community health behaviors. During the same time period, Anera’s Child Well-being Program, funded by the Canadian International Development Agency, provided psychosocial programs for children, giving them the opportunity to participate in regular cultural, athletic and other social activities to support their physical, cognitive, and behavioral development. Together, these programs reached hundreds of women, children and families in Gaza City.
In 2002, Anera and Johns Hopkins teamed up to conduct a study in Gaza which found that children were suffering from anemia, vitamin A deficiency, and malnutrition. The next year, Anera’s Milk for Preschoolers program began, supplementing the nutritional needs of the most vulnerable children with a snack of carefully fortified milk and biscuits. By the end of the program in 2011, Anera was feeding 25,000 children daily with more than 20 of the schools located in Gaza City. The Milk for Preschoolers program also trained teachers in using puppet theaters and storytelling to create lessons that emphasized good health habits.
With every water and sanitation infrastructure project comes public awareness sessions for the residents of the impacted area. Anera’s health professionals hold classes on waterborne illnesses and good hygiene practices in a place where water is of such poor quality. For instance, we conducted household and community-level sessions for the Macca Street and Al Amal neighborhoods that involved hundreds of participants. We provided all attendees with a household hygiene kit along with informational brochures and stickers.
In the early 1990s, Anera's medical committee elected to help develop the first community medical library in Gaza, at the Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City. Anera built the library, a multi-purpose building, with a grant from the European Community. Since that time, in the 2010s, Anera renovated the exterior of some of the hospital's old buildings and constructed a new facility to house diagnostic services, including MRI and CT rooms. In 2008, Anera rehabilitated the surgery, ICU, and toilet facilities at Al Quds Hospital.
Most recently, at both the Ahli Arab and Al Quds Hospitals, Anera installed reverse osmosis desalination units that each deliver 13,000+ gallons of clean drinking water every day. At the Ahli Hospital, Anera upgraded their existing solar panel system to fill an increased need for power for the surgery and operation rooms. Anera also installed a reverse osmosis system at the Ard El Insan Palestinian Benevolent Association. The clinic specializes in childhood development, nutrition and illness, providing health and community and family behavioral change services. Before they had the desalination unit, the organization bought filtered water from private, unsupervised suppliers, at a cost of $300 per month.
In 2018, Anera delivered 10 dialysis machines to Al Shifa Hospital, bringing the hospital’s total up to 40 working machines. Al-Shifa hosts 70 percent of the approximately 700 patients in Gaza who need weekly dialysis treatments.
For many years Anera has provided blood testing and collection kits – sometimes a full year’s supplies – to the Gaza Central Blood Bank, the only nonprofit blood bank in Gaza. In the wake of the 2008-09 bombardment, Anera helped the bank increase its storage capacity and laboratory services by delivering equipment like refrigerators, refrigerated centrifuges, a chemistry analyzer and CBC machine. In 2015, Anera provided the blood bank with a new 66KVA generator, a reliable power source to sustain its operations. And, in 2022, Anera installed solar panels on the building, saving the organization some $3,500 monthly on fuel.
Humanitarian Relief and Emergency Response
Fifteen years of blockade, bombings and violent protests have taken a toll on Gaza's population. The economy has constricted over the years and there is a lack of resources, from building materials to food. Over seventy percent of the population in Gaza depends on humanitarian aid from foreign governments and non-profit organizations.
Medical Aid Donations
From our earliest days of operation, Anera has delivered humanitarian relief in the form of medical aid to Palestine. Some of our recipient organizations in Gaza City are the Near East Council of Churches, Caritas Medical Center, Society for Physically Handicapped, and the St. John Eye, Al Quds, Ahli Arab, and Shifa Hospitals. The value of the medicines and other healthcare supplies Anera has delivered is in the hundreds of millions.
Anera’s medical donation distribution center for all of Gaza is located in Gaza City. Our pharmacists process dozens of shipments every year. They routinely inventory and distribute hundreds of different items, ranging from syringes and walking aids to chronic disease medicines and cancer treatments.
From our earliest days of operation, Anera has delivered humanitarian relief in the form of medical aid to Palestine. Some of our recipient organizations in Gaza City are the Near East Council of Churches, Caritas Medical Center, Society for Physically Handicapped, and the St. John Eye, Al Quds, Ahli Arab, and Shifa Hospitals. The value of the medicines and other healthcare supplies Anera has delivered is in the hundreds of millions.
Humanitarian Relief
During and in the immediate aftermath of the bombardments of 2008-09, 2012, 2014, 2021 and 2022, Anera quickly responded to help families who were displaced or affected in other ways. We have distributed food aid, hygiene supplies, clothes, water, vouchers, and hot meals. In 2014, hundreds of men, women and children squeezed into Gaza’s Orthodox Church where they sought refuge from the bombings. They fled their homes with nothing but the clothes they were wearing as the bombs rained down on their neighborhoods. Anera provided the families at the church, and at two nearby schools, with food and water supplies to get them through weeks of displacement.
Flooding is a common occurrence in Gaza. Anera is building community-level stormwater systems throughout the territory to solve the problem in a more permanent way. In the meantime, we also provide families with a range of assistance to help them get through acute flooding crises. When torrential rains and flooding hit Gaza in 2013, for instance, Anera distributed 500 cleaning and personal hygiene kits to affected families in Gaza City’s Al-Zarqaa neighborhood.
Because the blockade of Gaza shuts the territory off from the world and cripples its economy, most families struggle to make ends meet and put food on the table. Anera provides food aid during Ramadan and clothing vouchers in winter to particularly vulnerable families. For many years Anera’s food aid took the form of food parcels. But more recently, Anera has switched to vouchers, as families enjoy having the choice of what to purchase. And, the vouchers support local businesses. In 2022, Anera’s team worked with 12 community organizations across all five governorates to distribute vouchers among families with the greatest needs.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a scourge that spared no society, rich or poor. Palestine is no exception. But Palestine’s inadequate healthcare, water and sanitation infrastructure, and resources made treating the virus and stemming its spread much more difficult. Throughout the pandemic, Anera provided increased support to healthcare facilities (read our report). From March 2020 to February 2022, Anera delivered $1.5+ million worth of donated or procured personal protective equipment to health responders throughout Palestine. The medical donations team distributed the supplies to Al Quds Hospital and 12 other hospitals and clinics in Gaza. Anera also installed a desalination system at one of Gaza’s largest hospitals, turning Gaza’s contaminated groundwater into clean water for drinking and use in treating patients.
