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1. Embed this notice
   Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 00:19:57 JST Aral Balkan

   Folks, just a heads up: I’m busily coding a Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal site so that we can raise one amount that will get all our remaining families in the danger zone in the North to safety in the South.

   I’m adapting the donation form I’d made for us at Small Technology Foundation (https://small-tech.org/fund-us – don’t worry about donations to us at the moment, eye on the ball, folks!)

   Joy’s busy compiling the list of Gaza Verified families that are still stuck in the North and the monies they need to get to the South.

   We’re going to add those up and set a total amount and then push that out with a campaign similar to the one I ran last night. I could really use your help once that starts to spread the word and help out if you can.

   I don’t have the exact number of families off the top of my head right now (head in code mode) but it’s too many. Even one is too many. Anyway…

   So we’re going to collect the donations into our Small Technology Foundation account and then transfer them to everyone’s individual fundraisers. I’ve got that basic functionality running right now (it looks like crap but it’s running so I’m going to work on making the page look more appealing for the rest of the day).

   As much as I’d like to start the campaign tonight, realistically, it’s better if we start it tomorrow.

   Every night, though, is a chance that we will have fewer families to help…

   Anyway, I just wanted to give you a heads up. If you’re around tomorrow, I could use your help in spreading the word.

   Thank you all so much for showing our Gaza Verified family so much love already.

   I think I’ll be able to breath a little easier once the remaining families in the North are safely in the South.

   💕

   #GazaVerified #Gaza #Palestine #fediAid #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 02:25:20 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     The site is coming along, fingers crossed, we should be able to start the campaign tomorrow.

     (We haven’t raised any money for it yet and that’s not the amount we‘re aiming for, that’s just dummy data and wishful thinking in the screenshot.)

     💕

     #GazaVerified #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #webSite #dev

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 02:27:27 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • sara

     @sagilca 💕

   • Embed this notice
     sara (sagilca@mastodon.green)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 02:27:28 JST sara

     in reply to

     @aral Wow, thank you much. That is amazing.

     thank you

     millones de gracias

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 02:31:12 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Elena Rocks X :cerdito:
     • sara

     @ElenaMusk @sagilca 💕

   • Embed this notice
     Elena Rocks X :cerdito: (elenamusk@tuiter.rocks)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 02:31:13 JST Elena Rocks X :cerdito:

     in reply to

     • sara

     @sagilca @aral Thank u boss!!!

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 03:57:52 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     Right, I think the campaign site is ready :)

     It even automatically updates the status on open pages as donations come in (thanks to Kitten’s¹ event-based model) :)

     Yay! Will deploy tomorrow :)

     🤞

     ¹ https://kitten.small-web.org

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 04:29:49 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Irene (she/they, Sir/Mr.)

     @irenetherogue Please don’t mention it and I really hope it does and that we can have a successful campaign tomorrow.

     Your support means the world 💕

   • Embed this notice
     Irene (she/they, Sir/Mr.) (irenetherogue@freesky.world)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 04:29:51 JST Irene (she/they, Sir/Mr.)

     in reply to

     @aral

     Thank you so so much for doing this work, and for keeping us posted on your progress. There are many who remain eager for an opportunity to help, even in a small way, and you building that site creates such opportunity. I just wish i had a bigger microphone for you to talk into/more to offer the cause 🩷

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:04:23 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Marta García

     @mrtagrc 💕

   • Embed this notice
     Marta García (mrtagrc@anda.lu)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:04:24 JST Marta García

     in reply to

     @aral You're amazing, thanks, this is a wonderful idea! trying to help everyone and I was feeling overwhelmed, I can't even imagine Joy and you, really thank you so much.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:04:28 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • BlackIkeEagle

     @BlackIkeEagle 💕

   • Embed this notice
     BlackIkeEagle (blackikeeagle@mastodon.pirateparty.be)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:04:30 JST BlackIkeEagle

     in reply to

     @aral nice, keep up your great work. Really admirable.

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:06:03 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • gomli

     @gomli Thank you so much.

   • Embed this notice
     gomli (gomli@piaille.fr)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:06:04 JST gomli

     in reply to

     @aral
     For several days, I had been thinking that boosting individual fundraising campaigns alone was not the most effective way to help the Palestinians registered here (running out of steam?), and you did it, well done! :)

     Would it be interesting to put up a kind of table showing the evolution of the basic needs of Palestinians and their families?

     I'm willing to help with
     - coding (depending on the backend, direct HTML, Markdown, static generator, php or something else?)
     - updating the information based on what these people post here.
     - french translations

   • Embed this notice
     Rokosun (futureisfoss@fosstodon.org)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:12:42 JST Rokosun

     in reply to

     • Leftover woman

     @RosaCtrl @aral

     Yeah I'm impressed too, great work Aral!

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:12:42 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Rokosun
     • Leftover woman

     @futureisfoss @RosaCtrl Yep. Gutted the donation form I’d already built for small-tech.org as I mentioned earlier, hacked it down a little, and added a very lightweight way of handling automatic updates following a successful Stripe donation.

     Kitten, really did make it possible.

     You can peer into the source for the emergency branch (link in site footer) if you want to see how stuff’s done in Kitten :)

   • Embed this notice
     Leftover woman (rosactrl@social.vivaldi.net)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:12:43 JST Leftover woman

     in reply to

     @aral you did all of it today⁉️

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:23:29 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • tio

     @tio 💕

   • Embed this notice
     tio (tio@social.trom.tf)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 09:23:30 JST tio

     in reply to
     I've noticed you putting a lot of effort into this @aral . Kudos to you man! What is happening in Gaza is hell on earth. Happy to see people like you helping out.
   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 10:48:08 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Yaku 🐗

     @Yaku 💕

   • Embed this notice
     Yaku 🐗 (yaku@puntarella.party)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 10:48:10 JST Yaku 🐗

     in reply to

     @aral Thank you :blobcatheart:

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 17:39:59 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • anna_addis

     @anna_addis Very much inspired by the successful prior work of lovely folks like @divya 💕

   • Embed this notice
     anna_addis (anna_addis@todon.eu)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 17:40:00 JST anna_addis

     in reply to

     @aral thank you for this, Aral. Being able to support multiple families with a single donation, instead of choosing one or two at random, is great.
     What you are doing is the work of love and humanity 💞

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 22:05:33 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Joy

     Folks, a quick update on my plans for today regarding the Gaza Verified Emergency Appeal we’re launching today.

     • The site is ready (as it’ll be, we can improve as we go).
     • Updates to Small Technology Foundation site to suspend our own fundraising and forward to the emergency appeal are also ready to deploy
     • I also made a simple call to action SVG with a basic image embed code that you can add to your sites. More info when appeal launches.
     • The amount we’ve been able to gather from people we’ve been able to reach is ~$12,700. I’m thinking that we’ll round that up to $15,000 so we have some padding to account for constantly rising prices on the ground and to account for a rapidly evolving situation. (@joynewacc’s been doing an amazing job with this in the middle of everything else and I just want to express again my immense respect for her.)

     I also need to pick up Laura from the airport. She’s scheduled to arrive before 3PM Irish Time so, barring any delays, I aim to be back and launch the campaign at around 5PM Irish Time (which should be good for the European and American time zones).

     That said, Dublin Airport has been evacuated due a security threat (https://www.rte.ie/news/2025/0920/1534475-dublin-airport-evacuation/) and if there are delays, I might launch it before I leave for the airport.

     Will need your help to spread the word when I do.

     I’ll keep you updated.

     Thank you all for your amazing support so far.

     💕

     #GazaVerified #Gaza #Palestine #GazaVerifiedEmergencyAppeal #EmergencyAppeal #fediAid #statusUpdate

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 20-Sep-2025 23:16:53 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Joy

     @joynewacc OK, about to leave for the airport. I should hopefully be back to launch the campaign around 5PM or a little later Irish time.

     🤞

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 21-Sep-2025 01:30:40 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Joy

     @joynewacc Back gome!

     Going to start deploying stuff and will update you all when it’s all ready.

     💕

   • Embed this notice
     Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 21-Sep-2025 02:33:44 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • zbrando

     @zbrando Hah, more like back liquid glass (no I haven’t upgraded and I’m not looking forward to it) as I’ve switched back to a Mac as my primary machine (this was the straw that broke the camel’s back: https://ar.al/2024/06/23/fedora-has-been-shipping-with-a-broken-screen-reader-for-nine-years-but-the-real-problem-is-me/) :)

   • Embed this notice
     zbrando (zbrando@social.vivaldi.net)'s status on Sunday, 21-Sep-2025 02:33:45 JST zbrando

     in reply to

     @aral Was your back gone because of too much coding? Or back Gnome, because you changed Linux distro? 😬