About Us
Why and how SafeHarbor Network came to exist and what we do
At the moment of this writing, an estimate of 1.3 million displaced Palestinians are stranded in tents in Rafah . The people sheltering there face daily Israeli air strikes, extremely limited resources and an impending ground invasion. Large amounts of Palestenian people are displaced elsewhere and are separated from their families. The ongoing war keeps many lives at risk.
Many of them arrived at the painful conclusion, that the only way to ensure their and their loved ones’ safety is through evacuation into Egypt. Unfortunately, passing through the border involves very high evacuation costs that many of these displaced and dispossessed can not afford. This is why so many fundraisers were set up through different networks (mostly GoFundMe and Indiegogo), and some have difficulty in reaching a wide enough audience.
We are a small but diverse group of people from different countries of different ethnicities with different relations to the onling war. After some of us started fundraising campaigns ourselves, some of us personally were approached by a family in Rafah, we all united together to aid in raising money to help at risk persons get to a safe harbor. In the process we realized some things:
- The effort we were making towards saving these few lives was helping only a tiny fraction of the many trying to escape
- Some people are reluctant to donate, not knowing where the money would go to and if these fundraisers go towards real people
- GoFundMe is a fundraising platform, not a safe passage platform or trust network
This is the reason we started the SafeHarbor Network. The idea is a humanitarian group which is establishing a “trust graph” that enables each of us to build beyond our personal relationships with Palestinians shelter seekers and leverage our group connections, knowledge, and resources to help all those under this umbrella.
Our aim is to bring together as many fundraising campaigns in one place so they all get equal exposure and try to promote them as much as possible. We can answers questions, offer advice for your campaigns, and also coordinate directly with all the people running the campaigns and sometimes directly with displaced persons in Palestine. We aim to links, media, to the crowdfunding page’s manager’s social media, as well as further proof of first hand acquaintance with these people as well as with people fleeing. The later case must be handled carefully due to security concerns.
We as SafeHarbor attest that any campaign we add to SafeHabor website, one or multiple people on our side have a direct first-person contact or strong second-hand link to the campaigns we feature. For every campaign we feature, you can find information about the asylum seekers in question, the people who set up their crowd funding campaigns (since many platforms do not offer access to them in the Gaza Strip, so they rely on external help from countries that have access), and their direct connection to a member of our team.
We hope that these efforts could save as many lives as possible, along with the wish for an immediate ceasefire and entrance of sufficient humanitarian aid to end this horrific crisis.
Our Network
Anna is an IT professional who has worked at the intersection of technology and geopolitics for the last decade.
Brian Barber bio soon…
Daragh Murray is a senior lecturer in international human rights law at Queen Mary University of London. He worked in Gaza in 2008 and 2009, and has been back on two occasions since. read more
Elin Hofman works in the field of mental health and psychosocial support, developing programs for children on the move. read more
Emma van der Zalm is a correspondent for Dutch and Belgian media in Egypt since 2018. read more
Hanna Baumann is a researcher at University College London who lived and worked in Gaza between 2009 and 2010. read more
Ines Abdelrazek is an advocate to defend Palestinian rights internationally. read more
Lydia de Leeuw is a Dutch human rights advocate who lived and worked in Gaza from 2011 until 2013 and has been back to the strip several times since. read more
Monique Van der Weijden is an Arabist who lived and worked in the Middle East for 12 years and considers it her second home read more
Dr. Susan Power is a human rights researcher who has lived and worked in Ramallah, Palestine in 2013, and again between 2017 and 2022, and visits Palestine regularly since. read more
Uri is a musician from Berlin who cares a lot about the well being other humans.
We thank you for your help and care for other humans.
Photo credits: AFP, Reuters, individuals & familes