Dear Supporters and Friends,

Thirty-seven years ago, and soon after Palestinian refugees in Lebanon suffered numerous devastating hardships including the Sabra and Shatila Massacre, UPA established a fund dedicated to providing desperately needed emergency relief in times of crisis. The Emergency Relief Fund’s origins derived from the realization that ‘emergency’ was and will remain a recurring reality for Palestinians in our areas of operation until a just resolution addresses the root causes of our people’s oppression.

In 2020 this reality was no different. The communities you help us serve experienced the new challenge of COVID-19 in addition to those caused by displacement, occupation, and de-development.

The anxiety, increased unemployment, domestic stress, and breakdown of established social supports only added to the pandemic’s impact on public health.

In the Gaza Strip, to address this reality, UPA’s Healing Through Feeling Program quickly adapted its services to a virtual platform. By doing so, the program extended its outreach to several thousand new participants and provided essential psychological first aid as well as ongoing mental health support.

In the West Bank and elsewhere, UPA was instrumental in addressing the economic ramifications of the pandemic by providing much needed food supplies and hygiene kits to underserved communities and marginalized families.

In Lebanon, the state of emergency caused by the devastating explosion at the Beirut port compelled UPA to respond promptly by locally procuring medicines and hospital consumables to replenish the stock of the Palestinian Red Crescent Hospitals. Later, this was followed by providing these hospitals and other health facilities with pharmaceuticals and medical supplies through the UPA In-kind gift program.

In Jordan, for the last seven years, UPA has been providing Palestinian refugees in Gaza and Hittin Camps with essential services that pave the way to a more dignified life. However, to effectively empower Palestinian communities and improve lives through socially responsible and sustainable programs, it was clear that an established local presence in the refugee camps was essential.

Your financial support enables us to enhance health services, to provide ongoing mental health support to individuals and families, offer university scholarships, create job training opportunities for youth with disabilities, promote economic growth by supporting small business startups and sustainable agricultural projects in rural areas, address food insecurity in marginalized communities and much more.

As importantly, your commitment and overwhelming generosity enable us to respond to emergencies while maintaining our regular program activities in support of Palestinian communities. On behalf of all those you helped us serve, please accept our gratitude.

Sincerely,

Saleem F. Zaru

Executive Director