flesh and blood and failure

Mo Ayesh (@/el-shab-hussein’s vetting contact on the ground) is currently sick and can’t do the extra vetting process we’d like to get in order to increase Aya’s reach and trust, so until he recovers, I’ve put her in touch with Bees and Watermelons collective on Instagram in hopes they can go through their process with her and add her to their supported campaigns.

In the meantime, my friends at Gaza Thrift Collective who initially asked me for help getting her fundraiser some traction and checked her credentials sent Aya $300 so she can buy some food. But $300 doesn't go a long way in Gaza, where supply is extremely low and demand is extremely high, and Gaza Thrift supports multiple families with their pop-up events in DC and NYC, so even their funds are limited.

Thus, donations are really important for the survival of Aya and her children. To my knowledge, the Rafah border is still closed, so it wouldn't be possible to pay Hala agency for evacuation -- yet. I hope that in the future, when the border is open again (it opens and closes often), we can help Aya's family evacuate, too.

During this International Week of Deaf People and in Deaf Awareness Month, I would love to bring attention to Basem, a deaf journalist in Gaza who has been reporting on news in Palestine in sign language. He works to keep information accessible not only to Palestinians, but to the deaf community globally.

There isn’t a lot of discussion about how Israel’s attacks on Gaza affect the over 15,000 deaf Palestinians, but Basem has been continuing to raise awareness and highlight the challenges deaf people face during this genocide.

A Haitian American woman with long Covid and her daughter with cancer have both been struggling to raise funds that would help them during their illnesses. Both of them live in the Midwest, which is where a lot of the most recent fear mongering has been centered.

COJEHA is a Haitian organization that provides financial support for youth, teaches agricultural skills, helps ensure children attend school, and teaches other soft life skills. They're working on building a farm with fish and vegetable crops where teaching occurs, which will also increase local access to fresh food.

P4H Global is the organization that has been working on building the canal connected to the Massacre River, another agricultural project. They have also been working to support education in Haiti, with both teachers and students.

The Haitian Community Center in Springfield, Ohio. Springfield's food bank, community health center, and a local Catholic organization that provides aid are also accepting donations.

Richard Pierrin is a journalist who has had to flee Haiti and is trying to get a visa that will allow him to work, and that doesn't end after 3 months.

Marc Henry and his family have been dealing with food insecurity for months, and are trying to get funds so they can eat, as well as supplies like livestock and fishing equipment so they can sustain themselves even after the fundraiser is done. They're close to their goal.

An elderly couple's home was damaged multiple times over the last few years and they are trying to raise funds to finish construction. They are also very close to their goal.

A fundraiser for children in Jacmel to provide food, water, and clothes.

A fund for several families to secure plane tickets out of the country

OTRAH is an organization that helps trans Haitians and wants to expand their services to combat HIV. They don't have a gofundme, instead donations are discussed over email.

There is also this thread of Haitian gofundmes which updates fairly regularly

I forget exactly where I saw the initial post asking for volunteers, but on July 10th, I reached out to the listed email. Jane, the organizer, got back to me right away and within an hour I was added in their discord.

Up until this point, I had been maintaining an average 8 ESims myself, so I already had experience checking in on them on a daily basis. The folks there helped me onboard with the spreadsheets for keeping track, and now it's very easy for me to catalog new ones I buy and record daily data usage. The whole process takes me maybe 20-40 minutes a day depending now on how many ESims actually need to be topped off.

Jane has been very up front with lots of the group's information, with frequent announcements about the groups current funds and amounts of daily ESims sent out. She and the others have been super helpful with getting funds to us when needed, and I've almost never had to actually spend any of my own money for any of this.

In the time that I've been volunteering, they figured out how to run a Business account with the Nomad ESim company. Which means that now and then they can just send 15 or so ESims my way, and I just catalog them and send the QRcodes towards Mirna and the Connecting Gaza folks. No more wasting time with the purchasing process, while getting a bit of a bulk discount on top of that.

We also share updates on whatever brand of ESims are most needed. When folks on the ground tell us that one network doesn't seem reliable, we are able to switch over for a while until either the networking issue is fixed, or we all pressure customer service enough to replace them for us.

There's also lots of complaining about new UI updates an general website bugs. There's surprisingly a lot of them and it's good to know other folks are getting info from customer service when things go wrong.

In August they made a meme channel

Anyways....

Lets get into some stats for myself. In 2 months (July 10- Sept12) I have:

Send off 171 ESims

Maintained around 60 active ones

Topped up these active ESims 139 times

Spend over $6400 donated dollars

I have multiple power users who have burned through close to 100GB. 2 of them have broken 200GB. These are most likely being used as hot spots.

Why am I sharing all of this? Mostly to show how easy it has been to make a marginal difference. I have helped at least 60 people stay connected with the outside world in just 2 months. Probably more if we assume some of the power users becoming hotspots for other folks. This is 20-40 minutes of my time a day, and I honestly regret not signing up to do this sooner.

I was specifically limiting myself to this workload because I wanted to test the waters. Those stats was me specifically not wanting to push myself and see what impact a normal person could make with 20 minutes a day. At this point I think I will be taking more advantage of Nomad's Tuesday discounts to really bulk up my numbers. It's pretty easy to buy 15 or so every Tuesday, and then send em over.

If you would like to join us in this endeavor, please reach out to Jane at cripsforesimsforgaza(at)gmail

We are specifically looking for people in European time zones, since a lot of us are in the Americas and that's quite a difference between us and Gaza. If not, that's no problem!

If you can't participate, that's totally fine, but please donate what you can! Folks like you are the ones who keep us going!

I'm worried I'm going to lose my friend but all we can do now is wait. If you want to support them further Mahmoud's wife posted her sister's paypal which will be used to pay for medicine and solutions that can help clean his wound.

Caroline: If you saved a dollar a day for a year, do you know how much money you'd have? Roughly $30,000.

Meg: If you're 25 and you and your friends don't meet up to day trade, how are you expecting to be a millionaire in your 20's?

Caroline: If you go to a restaurant and you're like, Oh, what am I gonna eat for dinner? Like, that's the wrong mindset. You should be thinking, How can I buy this restaurant?

Meg: Flip your mindset. If women just stop giving lip injections for a year, what they save? 80k?

Caroline: You need grit, determination, and a small loan from your parents.

Meg: I'm at the point where if someone came up to me and said, If you slap your mom, I'll give you $15 million - I'd slap my mom, but I would not accept the $15 million, cause to be honest, that job experience is invaluable on my resume.

Caroline: They say, Oh, I have property, how can I make more money on my property? It's simple, like, buy little green houses. Maybe a red hotel.

Meg, now wearing a top hat and monocle: And instead of being innovative in building their passive income, people are worried about going to jail. Really easy to not go to jail, just roll doubles and you're done.

Caroline, also now wearing a top hat and monocle: In life you need to know who you are, like are you an iron? Are you a racecar? Are you like a thimble? (The monocle falls off, but Caroline puts it back on.)

Meg: Totally. And I'm at the point where when I go back to my hometown, people are like, How do I invest in money like you? How do I buy properties like you? Where'd you get that tiny little monocle from?

After the last clip, the TikTok ends with a thumbnail showing Caroline and Meg shaking hands. Behind them is an image of a stock exchange. The title, written in bright green all-caps, is "Money Movement Mindset".

#op i appreciate the way you explained this!!!!! #and i see you trying to avoid all the 'gotchas' you can. and i respect that. may your notes on this post be exceedingly normal <3

/End ID.]

[ID: Screenshot of a tumblr tag that says:

#may your poor be free of piss