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1. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 28-Sep-2025 22:24:17 JST Aral Balkan

   in reply to

   Hey all,

   @joynewacc and I had a meeting today to discuss how Gaza Verified will continue to evolve in the coming days based on our experience of having run it for one month now (yes, it has only been a month).

   Gaza Verified started with a simple mission: To try and protect the legitimate accounts of Palestinians in Gaza for whom Mastodon and the fediverse is their last lifeline to the rest of the world.

   These are people suffering through genocide and famine at the bloody hands of the Israeli state. Not only has every physical door been slammed in their faces but every virtual door as well, with Big Tech closing their accounts almost as soon as they are opened.

   Then, about ten days ago, as Israel began the latest “ground offensive” stage of its genocide, ordering 1 million people to move South, we realised we had Gaza Verified families trapped without funds to move. So last Saturday, we launched the emergency appeal (https://gaza-verified.org/emergency), with the initial goal of raising $15,000 to help 8 families. As the week progressed and we got more information from the ground, the campaign extended to cover 16 families and has, to date, raised ~$40,000.

   This has already enabled many of our families to move South and, for those who had already evacuated, to obtain land and tents. I’ll have exact numbers and case studies in the blog post I write up later.

   But we also learned a few things that now give us pause as we consider the path ahead:

   1. The campaign has raised an amazing amount of money in a short period of time but we are also getting reports from members that their individual fundraisers have been negatively impacted, with, in some cases, donations to them stopping all together.

   While our other members may not be in the North, the situation in the South is also dire. They still need steady donations each week to afford food, water, and the basic necessities. They pay rent for land and shelter at exorbitant prices.

   The emergency appeal was never meant to be permanent and I do not want us to become the single location for gathering donations for Palestinians. Nor do I want us to play god in distributing them.

   2. We’ve uncovered a small group of people from Gaza, displaced in Egypt, who are misrepresenting their location in order to gather donations. Some still have family in Gaza, others don’t. We have no reason to believe they’re not genuine victims of Israel’s genocide. However, they are also collecting money under false pretences.

   As such we are evolving our rules to explicitly state that misrepresentation will result in instant removal from the programme. We are also evolving our verification process to include multiple other means of verifying their immediate location.

   To be clear, we have a very good understanding at this point of the common characteristics of the accounts from Egypt that are involved in this and we should be readily able to filter any new ones in the future. And, again, this is, to our knowledge, a very small and concerted group of people and should not be taken as a reflection of the greater diaspora of people from Gaza displaced in Egypt or as a reflection of our Palestinian friends from Gaza in general.

   While the situation in Gaza is as dire as ever, Joy and I have never been under any illusion that we can save everyone or even come anywhere close to that. The sad reality is that the only people who can do that – the spineless and complicit leaders of our so-called Western democracies – are not lifting a single finger to stop Israel’s genocide. However, with your help, we can still do some good. And that matters too.

   So, given that (a) we do not want the continuation of the emergency campaign to suck all the oxygen out of the room for the individual fundraisers, (b) we refuse to play god in deciding who gets help and who doesn’t, and (c) we need to evolve the verification process and find new ways to help our families that do not end up in creating unscalable and unmanageable centralisation, we have decided that this is a good time to retire the emergency appeal as it reaches its current $40,000 goal today after having run for a week (I just checked and we have $639 to go).

   We will not run the emergency appeal again next week.

   Instead, we will continue to work to expand the reach of the individual campaigns and help all our families, while welcoming new ones.

   I’ll write a blog post about this today with more details. We will also come up with a plan to distribute the final raised amount (~$5,840.12 + whatever else comes in) to the families that still need assistance and I will, of course, write up a final impact report for you.

   As I said at the start, it’s only been a month since we started Gaza Verified and I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved together. There’s more do. And we are learning and evolving as we go.

   Please continue to show our friends and family in Gaza that they are welcome, safe, and loved on the fediverse.

   Thank you!

   💕

   #GazaVerified

2. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Thursday, 25-Sep-2025 04:01:55 JST Aral Balkan

   in reply to

   @joynewacc Hey everyone, here’s my Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal (https://gaza-verified.org/emergency) Impact Report for Day 4:

   Today the £5,000 donation we were waiting for by bank transfer came in (thank you so much, anonymous donor) :)

   From this, I took the €850 we had used of our own funds (see https://mastodon.ar.al/@aral/115254558184817053) to pay for Salem’s tent in Euros back into the foundation’s Euro account. The remaining amount was converted by Wise and added to the USD account and came to $5,712.62.

   We also had 256.55 in the USD pot from yesterday from unspent donations. (I saw that two of our foundation payments, for $4.99 and $25 came out of the USD pot so I converted enough EUR from our foundation’s main balance to put that back in.)

   I also withdrew the entire EUR pot in our Stripe account, which came to €1,386.94 and was converted in Wise to $1,622.42.

   So the combination of these amounts ($5,712.62 + $256.55 + $1,622.42) gave us a total of $7,591.59 to distribute today.

   And this is how we distributed it:

   • @shathamohammed123: We thought Shatha had asked for $1,200 for the tent but she thought she was asking for €1,200 because her fundraiser is in EUR. Anyway, we paid her $1,200 yesterday. I made a payment for €200 temporarily from our own funds to top up what we had to spend today so more families could be paid. Paying in Euros also meant no currency conversion fees. I will replace this amount from future donations. (Total paid: ~€1,200.)

   • @baraaelmoghrabi: The remaining $2,400 to cover cost of tent and land after earlier payment of $2,000 to cover transportation South. I only recently learned that Baraa’s family is actually four families and about 20 people. (Total paid: $4,400.)

   • @Abdullahawwad: The remaining $1,000 for his evacuation South after the same amount earlier. I wanted to complete this payment yesterday but PayPal limited my card. They were able to enable credit/debit cards on Abdullah’s fundraiser and I was able to made the additional payment today. (Total paid: $2,000.)

   • @emanahmed: Eman and her family of 8 were facing eviction after being displaced South. We paid her $1,300 today to cover rent and essential renovations on the house.

   • @reem_osama Reem was stuck in one of the worst parts of the North and on the streets with her family. She is @Sakhergaza13’s fiancee and neither he nor I could reach her earlier. Once we got word she was all right and what she and her family needed (for transport, land, and shelter) we sent her the full amount of $3,000 to get them out as soon as possible. Tomorrow is her birthday. We hope that she can spend it with Sakher in the South tomorrow or at least very soon after.

   The total payouts today came to $7,700 USD + €200. (I topped up the USD amount with $108.41 from the foundation’s own money temporarily so we could make the payments. We will return that to the foundation in the coming days as more donations come in.)

   In the last four days, we’ve distributed $29,770.42 to sixteen families in Gaza.

   At this point, it looks like we have $2,600 more to raise and pay out so Ahmed Osama’s family can get some land for the their tent and $2,000 left to give to Mohammed so he can evacuate South.

   We also have new members coming – some of whom are trapped in the North – and, as people get South, they might have new expenses.

   So I’ve raised our goal to $35,000 and we will continue the campaign.

   And I will introduce you to our new members soon.

   Thank you all again for your tremendous support.

   You are saving the lives of whole families in Gaza and I love you for it.

   💕

   #GazaVerified #EmergencyAppeal #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #Gaza #Palestine #fediAid #GazaVerifiedImpactReport

3. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 21-Sep-2025 04:20:24 JST Aral Balkan

   in reply to

   @joynewacc 🥳 60%

   Thank you! :)

   (We just got to 61% as I was writing that. We just passed $9,000!)

   Follow live with streaming updates at:
   https://gaza-verified.org/emergency

   💕