It is my massive pleasure to tell you that Western Union has FINALLY opened for only a few days due to internet blackout in shops for months, and Mustafa is able to collect the money yesterday and today.
Mustafa has finally gotten our £3500 and will be buying period pads for Gaza this weekend, inshallah. He will take lots of photos on distribution in which I will update you all once received.
We would have liked this to be earlier, but we have to stick with Western Union. Throughout the end of your donations (early January) till today, we have tried multiple solutions with no success:
(1) International money transfer via XE was rejected due to "not supporting transfer of donations", and they returned all funds to us. (2) Western Union put our donations on hold while they asked for Mustafa's ID and their translating team took few weeks and after 5 phone calls of chasing up, they held on the line for 1 hour and finally allowed the funds to be retrieved by Mustafa after knowing the urgency of the situation. We also had to create a PDF for the Gaza branch to say that Mustafa is the person collecting the transfer on behalf of Direct Funds for Gaza. (3) Many banks and services do not support money transfer to Palestine, including Monzo and Wise. We have tried transferring to his friend in Gaza, however it was rejected as they only accept transfers to occupied Palestine. (4) We have other plans in case Western Union still had our funds on hold - in this case it would be bank transferring to Mustafa's friends in Egypt and Turkey, and them transferring to him.
Thank you all so much for your patience and as all documentations are resolved and that Western Union is operating intermittently in Gaza again, I am pleased to say Direct Funds for Gaza will be running again and we will have a future campaign coming up once more.
Massive solidarity, Aryam, Izémrasen and Jia Wei Direct Funds for Gaza
