Rebuilding a Safe Place for Moe Kouta and Family

**Regarding the future of the campaign: Moe still has many family members in Gaza, who have not yet been able to make it to safety, or are struggling to meet their daily needs.  With all of this in mind, moving forward, any donations to this campaign will continue helping his people in Gaza who do not have a voice with the outside world and still need help.  Please do not hesitate to continue supporting the campaign so that we may continue to help the less fortunate who need it.**

My name is Moe Kouta. I am a Canadian citizen, from London, Ontario. I came to Gaza to attend college to complete my Bachelor’s Degree in Architecture Engineering. While I was here, I met and fell in love with my now-wife Haneen, we got married and began to start our family. We have two adorable sons, Abood and Ismail, and Haneen is currently pregnant with our third child, due to give birth at any moment now. I had finished my Bachelor’s Degree and was working to support our family and to complete my Master’s in Architecture Engineering. In mid-October, suddenly our life changed and our family was forced to stop everything to focus on remaining safe.

On October 22nd, my brothers, Abdel, Mahmoud and I decided to evacuate our families towards the south from Gaza City after being instructed that this was the safe place to go. It was a difficult choice to make, as we would have to leave family, such as our brother Ahmed (Prince Kouta) behind, but since there were frequent and seemingly random bombings in our neighborhood, we felt it was what we had to do. Haneen, our boys and I took a 5 km route on foot through Gaza that had been designated as “safe”, carrying whatever we could manage to hold. However, as we moved, we continued having to worry for our safety as we still experienced close air strikes and other immediate dangers. We were terrified as well as everyone else around us. As we were walking, Haneen fainted and I was unable to wake her up. At this point, I was forced to entrust my children to others around us that were also evacuating to allow me to carry Haneen so that we could keep moving towards the south of Wadi Gaza. This was especially scary, as at one point, we found we had been separated from one of our children. Thankfully we were able to find him again, although there were many others who were not so lucky.

Even after reaching the beginning of the area that is considered the south, we continued to walk for hours before finally reaching Rafah, where we took refuge in a school near the border. We decided to look for shelter here so that we could be close to the border, as we hoped to return home to Canada, to reunite with my parents and other siblings. Disappointingly, despite my being a citizen, we still have not received permission to leave for Canada through Egypt. As of this time, I have been without pay since October, and have little means to acquire resources for myself, Haneen and our two, soon to be three, children. We have been without warm clothes, diapers, food, sanitary products and many other necessities this entire time. As the price of food and goods has risen exponentially, my family, like many others, find ourselves in a difficult situation, where getting the minimum to survive has become next to impossible. We are especially worried as the birth of our third child gets closer, since we are unsure how we are going to be able to find and purchase everything needed to care for a newborn baby. We are also just worried for the safety of my wife and the baby as she gives birth, since it may be difficult to find any medical care for them.

We are hoping to use this fundraiser to allow us to have the immediate means to find necessary supplies in our current situation, and depending on what the future allows, either pay for travel back to Canada or allow us to rebuild in Gaza.

A Note from Kate and Maryse: Hello everyone, we are friends of the Kouta family and set this fundraiser up on Moe’s behalf. In the event Moe’s personal accounts cannot be connected with GoFundMe (as a beneficiary), one of us will collect the proceeds and deposit them into a savings account with our own bank. Transfers would be made in increments, while we find another method for this process to be sustainable. It’s an unpredictable situation but we would like everyone to rest assured, this is not a scam and we have no personal interest or gain. We will continue talking with Moe day by day when his service allows, and we will continue working on solutions if any issues arise. Please message us on Instagram @evrydyrpnzl or @maryseartsy for any questions that we can answer directly.

You can also follow any updates from Moe on his current situation by following him on Instagram or TikTok