Support Families with Disabilities in Repairing their Homes
By Jen Doyle
The Gaza Emergency Relief project is all about responding to urgent needs including helping families get back on their feet by finding income (eg. job training, agriculture inputs, or micro-business grants) and also about making homes healthy, safe, and more liveable. When we learned of three families in Gaza with disabilities who are struggling with housing, Site Engineer Heba visited to learn more.
Each of these families have teenage and adult children with Phenylketonuria (PKU), a genetic condition in which they cannot digest a fundamental amino acid called phenylalanine. Without special medical food, cumulative brain damage results. When we learned that the Palestinian Department of Health stopped sending medical food to PKU families in Gaza, Rebuilding Alliance set about raising funds to sponsor children and deliver medical food as best we can. As our partner team at Youth Vision Society got to know the families, they asked for Eng. Heba's assistance to resolve a different level of emergency: housing.
Eng. Heba, has always been passionate about affordable housing and supporting families in need, and is an expert in architectural engineering. She meets with families to understand their needs before creating a design, and then works with each of our partner NGOs to develop their Request for Proposal, review their bids, and assess each stage of constuction through to final sign-off.
Heba met with three families who need assistance:
Mena is a 17-year-old girl with PKU who is mentally disabled and in chronic pain, unable to perform basic tasks without assistance. Mena is isolated from the outside world and spends most of her time in her room. The room Mena lives in is small and barren, lacking even a bed or chairs. She shares this room with her seven siblings, two of whom also suffer from PKU.
Heba’s plan is to split Mena's room so that the boys and girls could live in separate quarters and have privacy, then to buy furniture. Heba also has plans for renovating the kitchen and bathroom. Her renovations would include basics like tiling and plumbing and also would make these spaces more accessible, organizable, and comfortable.
Husam is a 34 year old married man with PKU. His condition has caused damage to his brain and body, making movement difficult for him. He lives in the same house as his five brothers and their wives and children. Husam and his wife find themselves frustrated by the lack of privacy that comes from sharing a single room with so many other families.
Husam’s bed is very old, worn down, and in need of repair. Why repair? He has an emotional attachment to this bed and would prefer it was repaired rather than receiving a new one. He is also in dire need of new clothes because he has very few things for himself. Husam struggles with finding work as many potential employers are reluctant or unwilling to hire someone with a disability.
The H. family in Gaza has 5 sons and daughters, all of whom have been diagnosed with PKU. They are adults ages 30 to 37, however they are all very reliant on their parents' care because of their disabilities. As the parents are getting older, they worry about who will support their children, especially because having PKU carries a stigma.They have essentially no outside personal or medical support, making caring for them extremely difficult.
These 5 PKU adults have next to no furniture: no beds, chairs, or dressers. The house has no windows — so we want to provide furniture and windows too. The bathroom needs to be completely refurbished including shower and sink work, and some tile work. They also need help to install and get access to electricity.
Your support has been invaluable in addressing big needs and challenges for Gazan families facing big challenges — we'll need everyone's help on these three too. The total cost for addressing the needs of these three families is $7,500.
As funding arrives, Engineer Heba and the YVS team will do their best to address the important construction and furnishing projects to improve each home — that's the first step. We'll keep you posted as the projects move forward.