GivingTuesday 2024: One Generation Under God
This GivingTuesday, in honor of the children you love in your life, make a generous GivingTuesday gift in support of their peers growing up amid the unthinkable.
Earlier this year, a number of children in Gaza participating in a CNEWA-Pontifical Mission trauma and counseling program shared with us their testimonies. These children are displaced, living in tents and shelters in Gaza. Here are their stories, in their own words, as read by students at St. Joseph-by-the-Sea High School in Staten Island, New York.
What is it like to grow in a war zone?
“I feel like I was born in a war, and my life will end in war.” — Yazan, 14
Tens of thousands of children and youth are suffering psychosocial trauma as a result of the ongoing Gaza War. Over the past year, more than 42,000 people have been killed in Gaza and more than 120,000 have been injured — these totals only account for those whose bodies have been found, and the injured who have received treatment. The numbers of missing remain unknown. Our only certainty is, that as the war carries on, more people will be injured or killed.
For those in Gaza fortunate to survive another year of airstrikes and gunfire, the trauma is compounding. Daily life in Gaza, long marked by violence and poverty, has become defined by the need and will to survive, dodging missiles, finding food and water, securing medicines. Young people, whose chief concerns once included math homework and soccer practice, now learn to identify the sounds of explosions and bombings. Losing family and loved ones becomes a persistent source of fear and anxiety. With food, clean water and medical supplies in short supply, these children are at serious risk of malnutrition and illness, and simple childhood experiences — playing, learning, studying and dreaming about the future — are overshadowed by the primordial will and need to survive.
They didn’t ask for this. They didn’t start this war. They’re children.
And yet, the need extends much further than the Holy Land. From Ukraine to Lebanon to Ethiopia, the children coming of age in the regions we serve are growing up faced with unprecedented challenges and traumas. The need for support — immediate aid for the orphaned and displaced and long-term rehabilitation for those facing these compounding traumas — is enormous.
You can support these children and their families living amid total war, poverty and socioeconomic collapse.You can make a difference in their lives — providing an innocent child a chance for some semblance of stability, spiritual and material comfort, and solace and healing.
The funds we raise support CNEWA’s mission to reach the most vulnerable, to touch the lives of those marginalized by war, violence and poverty. Thanks to your generosity, we’ll be able to do more to protect and support children and youth in regions of the world we serve hit hardest by war.
Because whether safe and healthy here at home, or hiding from bombs in the Holy Land, they are one generation under God.