Supporter: William Baron

My last visit of the day is to a neighborhood after-school programme, where Mercy Corps pays unemployed graduates to work in after-school centres, supporting the learning of school children from particularly vulnerable households that are performing most poorly at school.

An after-school study session at the Beit El Kheir centre, sponsored by Mercy Corps' cash-for-work programme. Photo: William Baron/Mercy Corps

At the Beit El Kheir centre, I find myself sitting round a table with five 7-year olds, their math exercise books in front of them.

“Do you like coming here?”, I ask them, remembering my own aversion to any extra-curricular work when I was younger.

“Yes,” they chorus in response to the Arabic translation. And why do you like coming here? I ask. There is a pause, before the smallest little girl replies quietly, “because we want to learn”.

Their favorite subject, they say, is English (apart from little Rita who says Arabic is the best as it is easy!), but when I ask why they want to learn English they are temporarily overcome with shyness, so instead I ask Ramzi — their teacher employed through the cash-for-work programme — why he thinks its important children in Gaza learn English.

Without a moment's hesitation, and speaking in English perhaps to make sure nothing is lost, he replies: “So we can tell the outside world about our situation here.”

And after two days here I’m inclined to agree, that above all else this is perhaps the most important challenge for Gaza in securing its future.

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In the late afternoon sunshine, we leave a dusty alley in one of the poorer neighbourhoods of Gaza City, and are welcomed into a small sewing workshop by Ali, the coordinator for this cash-for-work team.

“Today they are making school uniforms,” he tells me through a translator. I hold up a pair of dark blue tracksuit bottoms that come up to my knees. Too small for a lanky European such as me, we all smile and agree, but presumably just the right size for the school children in Gaza who will receive them.

Projects such as this show clearly the duel benefits cash-for-work activities can bring, producing items such as school uniforms (or bread rolls from the bakery) that are then distributed free to the kindergartens and schools most in need, while also providing vital income for workers such as these.

Not long ago there were numerous clothing manufacturers in Gaza, but in the past couple of years most have closed down as exports from Gaza have been banned and they have lost their markets in neighbouring countries. Of the eighteen women in the workshop today, all had once worked in the tailoring sector, but now have no source of income and have at least five family members they have to support.

It is no surprise then, that when we ask the women how they find the work, they respond with nods and smiles and even a few grins and thumbs up. But, they quickly say — becoming serious and earnest once again — two months work is not enough and they need more. This is a familiar refrain that I hear time and time again throughout the day.

And this is the problem facing organisations such as Mercy Corps in Gaza. Contrary to the usual post-conflict and post-natural disaster scenario — where emergency assistance is followed by recovery and normality gradually begins to resume — in Gaza there is very little improvement and no return to normality, with the blockade preventing any such recovery.

Cash-for-work activities such as this ECHO-funded programme provide immediate and crucial relief, enabling beneficiaries to feed their families for today. But in Gaza, these same individuals will need the same support tomorrow, if they are to avoid sliding further into debt and hunger.

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On Sha’af street in Gaza City, twenty-five men work in unison, clearing the rubbish and sweeping away the dust that clogs the side of the road. They're all distinguished by the white caps they wear. It is hard work — and dull work — but from their focus on the task at hand, and the smiles and laughs they occasionally share, it is clear they are happy to be doing it.

A cash-for-work crew cleaning the streets in Gaza City. Photo: William Baron/Mercy Corps

One of the workers, a man named Yasser who's around 50 years old, pauses for a moment leaning on his broom and tells me he joined the road-cleaning programme just the previous week. Until five years ago, he says, he was a construction worker travelling back-and-forth into Israel each day, but since travel restrictions were imposed on Gaza he has lost this source of livelihood and hasn’t been able to find work since.

Now though — along with 150 other men — Yasser has work earning around £9-20 each day, which helps him support his ten family members. It's starting to make a small difference to the quality of life for communities living in the area by cleaning the streets and planting trees.

“How will you use the money”, I ask him, “on food, rent, clothes for your children…?”

“Food”, he says immediately, with a shrug, “just food.”

Since the conflict in January 2009, Mercy Corps’ cash for work programmes have provided crucial income support for more than 8,000 Gazans like Yasser, who are unable to find work in an economy devastated by bombs and the blockade, and whose families are literally struggling to survive. The road-cleaning programme is just one of a number of different types of cash-for-work activities that Mercy Corps is currently implementing with funding from European Commission Humanitarian Aid (ECHO), with others including baking, sewing, fisheries and after-school support activities.

Over the past two days I’ve visited a number of these different projects, in each hearing painful stories of loss and struggle. I see gratitude and relief at the crucial help that paid work for two months provides, but also see only too clearly the underlying desperation of individuals struggling to provide for their families, and unable to control their fate.

I will write more tomorrow.

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