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From day-old babies to children: How Sharjah has been helping Gaza’s orphans
This foundation has launched a campaign which aims to provide long-term care and essential services for over 20,000 orphaned children in the city
- PUBLISHED: Tue 18 Mar 2025, 2:59 PM
Baby Malak was just a few days old when she was found wrapped in a cloth, hanging from a tree in October 2023 in Gaza with no sign of her parents or family. Today, she has been adopted by a nurse and is living healthily in the city. Thousands of children in Gaza, including baby Malak, are benefitting from the work done by Sharjah's The Big Heart Foundation (TBHF).
TBHF has partnered with Palestine-based Taawon (Welfare Association) to launch a campaign titled ‘For Gaza’ which aims to provide long-term care and essential services for over 20,000 orphaned children in the city. On Monday, the foundation held an event for philanthropists and community members to spread awareness about the campaign and invite them to donate for a good cause.
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Speaking to Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the event, Dr Tareq Emtairah, Director General of Taawon, explained that they were looking for long-term commitments from their donors. “Any partner that joins us, ideally would sponsor a kid over five or ten years,” he said. “This is so that we can create a sustainable support for these kids. If you take care of a kid for five years and abandon it later on, it is very dangerous. That's why we are very careful to make sure that we campaign for enough funding to support the children until they are 18 years."
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This came as Israeli strikes on various locations killed at least 300 people across the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, ending a weeks-long standoff over extending the ceasefire that halted fighting in January.
Impact
TBHF has been collaborating with Taawon since 2013 to help those in need in Palestine and has completed 11 projects, which has impact over one million people. Established in 1983, Taawon is one of the largest developmental organisations in Palestine.
According to Dr Tareq, the association has managed to collect the details of more than 20,000 of the 35,000 orphaned children in Gaza. “We have verified and registered them in our system,” he said. “Over half of them are less than two years old and we consider them the most vulnerable. Our priority in the case of orphaned children is to find relatives or extended family members to raise them. We try to encourage local adoptions because we want the children of Gaza to stay there so that they can rebuild the city.”
The campaign launched by Sheikha Jawaher bint Mohammed Al Qasimi, seeks to secure sustainable aid for over 2,000 children in the form of education, healthcare, psychological support, food, and shelter.
Dr Tareq added that it cost $170 (approximately Dh625) to sponsor a child for a month in Gaza. “The vocational training and education will cost about $69,” he said. “Food and clothing costs about $50 and healthcare costs $30. The remaining goes into their mental and social care.”
Art exhibition
An art exhibition held on the sidelines of the event showed different parts of Gaza. Some painted glimmers of hope while others depicted the horrors of the ongoing war. Ranging from Dh2,500 to Dh35,000, the paintings were being sold to raise money for the campaign.
Palestinian artist Rihab Saidam’s piece titled the ‘Mother of the Martyr’ showed a mother carrying her dead child wrapped in a keffiyeh. Another one of her painting captured the pain of a sister kissing the hands of her baby brother who had been killed in the war.
“I have been living in the UAE for the last 45 years,” she said. “I have never seen my homeland and I don’t know if I will ever see it. I have family back home in Gaza. The only thing I can do is to keep talking, raise awareness and hope that my paintings sell so I can donate the money to help the children.”
