The dancing grandma who escaped the fighter jets

We’ve changed the names* of the women in this story to protect the privacy of the family that shared it with us. Every other detail comes straight from real life. This newsletter is dedicated to all the grandmothers of Lebanon and the grandchildren who care for them.

Yasmine’s* grandmother is 87 years old. Her name is Maysa*. She’s spent most of her life in the small Lebanese town of Maaroub, known for its old stone houses and fig trees. She loves dancing to traditional Arabic poetry and sewing dresses for her granddaughters. 

Several weeks ago, the Israeli military commanded her to flee her home or be bombed.

Yasmine works for our partner Anera, which supplies lifesaving (and lifebuilding) aid to refugees in Lebanon, Palestine, and Jordan. We’ve worked with Anera to deliver food to families in Gaza, as well as clothes and hygiene products to displaced cancer patients in Jordan. Anera’s projects in Lebanon provide people with everything from bedding to cystic fibrosis treatment.

Distribute Aid helps Anera do this by delivering bulk quantities of supplies: crutches, blankets, bars of soap, winter jackets, and so on. Months ago, we also pre-positioned emergency first aid kits in strategic points across Lebanon. 

Earlier this week, Anera’s frontline team told us “providing the health kits really helped a lot.” We hope the need for them decreases soon, but we’re planning to send more. Which sounds simpler in theory than in practice.

Getting aid into Lebanon and its neighboring countries has always been a challenge. Few regions in the world have such strict (and arbitrary) restrictions on aid shipments.

This is exactly why we believe our Levant response is so vital. Together with Anera, this year we’ve managed to deliver two shipments of aid to the region at a time when humanitarian aid is both scarce and desperately needed, after Israel and the United States launched yet another catastrophic war.

Our next container full of aid to Lebanon is scheduled to be delivered just a few weeks from now, on April 16. 

But moral victories don’t put food in bellies or bandages on wounds. So we want to deliver ten more shipments to the Levant. 

And we’re asking for your help.

This is what your gift can do for people   

When Yasmine’s grandmother, Maysa, was forced to flee her home in South Lebanon, Israeli bombs weren’t the only danger she faced on her journey. 

Maysa requires an oxygen tank to breathe, due to COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease). A single tank holds three hours of oxygen. On an ordinary day, Maysa’s path to the north would have taken one and a half hours. This time, it took twelve. 

Humanitarian aid quite literally saved her life, in the form of a chance encounter with an NGO medical team. Thanks to the equipment in their ambulance, they were able to keep Maysa breathing until she reached a hospital.

We want to deliver more of those lifesaving supplies to the Levant so that more families can remain whole. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again. Distribute Aid has the experience and logistical expertise necessary to get aid into the Levant, as well as the local partners to ensure each pallet is put to good use.

What we need is your support—whether that’s in the form of money to purchase food and clothes and medicine, or in-kind donations to fill a shipping container with the kinds of equipment that kept Maysa that day. 

Aid donations are the reason Maysa can still listen to hassoun birds singing in the morning, and cook mujadara hamra to feed her grandchildren. She can still tell Yasmine to “put on some makeup.” She still has a chance to return to her home in the South, and the generations of family memories that remain there. 

If you’ve found yourself wondering recently how you can have hope in this world, you can start here:

Quick hits

Here are a few more things you might find interesting:

• Roots, one of our partners in France, has a pet of the month competition on Instagram that is raising funds for their projects, including this new shower space for people-on-the-move in northern France.

• Local grassroots action works, Exhibit #50197: Muskogee Nation women organize their community to block the construction of an AI data center on tribal land.

• Ireland’s “basic income for artists” trial worked so well they decided to make it permanent.

• Need a cathartic chuckle and only have 3:59 of your life to spend watching a Norwegian Consumer Council video about “enshittification”? Spend it here.