August 24 – September 6, 2026
26 water trucks. 172,600 liters of clean water. Two weeks of showing up.
Before I get into the numbers, I want to start with where we are right now.
We are almost halfway through Initiative 17, and we are still $1,800 short of our regular $4,000 weekly goal.
That $4,000 is what keeps our teams moving in both Northern and Central Gaza. It pays for the water that children drink, mothers cook with, families wash with, and people use to clean wounds and maintain whatever basic hygiene is possible while living in tents, damaged buildings and rubble.
We cannot let donation fatigue become another thing Palestinians have to survive.
Over these two weeks alone, your donations put 172,600 liters of clean drinking water into Gaza. That is what $4,000 a week can do through a small grassroots initiative with people working directly on the ground.
And now we need to do it again.
We need your help beyond Substack.
We’ve built something extraordinary here, but we cannot keep circulating this campaign among the same people and expect them to carry it forever.
Please take GFF into your community. Share us with your church, mosque or synagogue. Your employer. Your local business. A community group. A foundation. Your friends and family. Someone you know who has been asking what they can actually do for Palestinians.
There are people who want to help Palestinians survive this genocide. They just don’t know we exist yet.
Help us find them.
🌍 We Finally Have One Home for Everything GFF
One thing we have struggled with is having all of our information scattered across different platforms. We have now created a central Gaza’s Forgotten Families Linktree, which will essentially serve as our website:
Gaza’s Forgotten Families — Official Linktree
From there, you can access our Chuffed campaign, complete Vimeo video archive, Instagram, TikTok, financial documentation, receipts, photographs, videos, past Substack reports and impact statements.
For anyone who wants to see exactly what their money becomes, it’s there.
Donate through our Chuffed campaign
Watch our GFF video archive on Vimeo
Beginning with this report, I will no longer embed dozens of individual receipts into every update. The receipts are still public. They, along with our supporting documentation, photos and videos, can be accessed through our archive. This lets us keep these reports readable without sacrificing transparency.
💧 INITIATIVE 15
August 24–30, 2026
We came up $300 short of our $4,000 goal.
And $300 isn’t an abstract fundraising number in Gaza.
It meant two water trucks didn’t go out — one in Northern Gaza and one in Central Gaza.
At Al-Duha Camp, people came from long distances when they heard Abood’s 5,000-liter truck had arrived. Some were running toward the truck with their containers. Around 160 families received water.
Then the truck emptied.
People were still waiting.
Abood told us simply that if we’d had more water, they could have helped more families.
That’s what $300 short looks like here.
Initiative 15 Impact
💧 82,800 liters of clean drinking water
🚛 13 water trucks
⛺ ~2,180 family/tent aid instances
🇵🇸 ~10,900 Palestinian aid instances
These are estimated instances of aid, not necessarily unique individuals. Some families and camps receive water repeatedly because the need itself repeats.
Northern Gaza — Abood
Abood delivered 46,000 liters across five trucks, reaching approximately 1,220 families across nine distribution areas.
One moment encapsulated the reality in which this work happens.
Abood called the coordinator of Al-Awda Camp to say the water was coming.
The man told him he couldn’t be there.
His father had just been killed, and he was going to retrieve his body for burial.
He was crying.
But before leaving to retrieve his father’s body, he made arrangements for someone else to meet Abood so the families in his camp could still receive their water.
Grief doesn’t stop the need for water.
Death doesn’t stop it.
And neither can we.
Central Gaza — Alaa
Alaa’s team delivered another 36,800 liters through eight trucks, reaching approximately 960 family/tent aid instances.
That week began with Alaa trying to distribute water while his own family was being evacuated.
He got his child and family out, found somewhere for them to go, and then walked back to meet his team and finish the water delivery.
He reported shrapnel falling dangerously close to him and his family’s tent.
And then he went back to work.
Families at Legislative Camp later told the team they had gone five days without water. At Aman Camp, GFF trucks were among the only trucks reaching families regularly.
💧 INITIATIVE 16
August 31 – September 6, 2026
If Initiative 15 showed us what happens when there isn’t enough money, Initiative 16 showed us the conditions our teams are willing to work through when the money is there.
On September 1, Gaza City was under intense bombardment.
And our team was distributing water.
We urged Alaa to be careful and told him that if conditions became too dangerous, he could stop.
His answer was:
“The families are in dire need of water. I will distribute four truckloads. We cannot stop, even if it costs us our lives.”
Four trucks went out that day.
They reached Al-Jalaa, Aman Camp, Sheikh Radwan and Legislative Camp while the team described feeling threatened throughout the distributions because of the bombardment around them.
Then on September 5, another four trucks went out to Al-Jalaa, Al-Mu’ahibin Camp and School, the Yellow Line area and Aman Camp — communities where water is scarce and, in some cases, GFF deliveries have become something families heavily depend upon.
Northern Gaza — Abood
Abood’s trucks kept moving too.
At Balqis School, more than 200 families were sheltering, with people also arriving from outside the school for water.
At Al-Amadi and Al-Nasr, approximately 380 families received water — but even then, some families at Al-Nasr were left without it.
At Street 10, Al-Zahra Camp and Peace Dove Camp each received water for roughly 160 families. Young men climbed onto the water truck afterward because the market was so far away and there was no transportation. They could ride there with the truck — but would have to walk all the way back carrying whatever they bought.
At Doha Camp, repeated requests brought another 5,000-liter truck to approximately 145 families.
And at Al-Nasr Neighborhood Camp, GFF arrived for the first time, reaching approximately 250 families before continuing to Sheikh Radwan.
Initiative 16 Impact
💧 89,800 liters of clean drinking water
🚛 13 water trucks
📍 Deliveries across Northern and Central Gaza, including remote communities and areas near the Yellow Line
And when we put these two weeks together:
💧 Initiatives 15 + 16
26 water trucks
172,600 liters of clean drinking water
$6,597 spent directly purchasing water
Two weeks of water reaching children, mothers, fathers, elderly people, displaced families, schools and camps that are repeatedly telling our teams the same thing:
We still need water.
Financial Transparency
We Have To Keep Going
There is something difficult about writing these updates week after week because eventually the words begin repeating themselves.
The children still come with the jugs.
Families still wait for the truck.
The water still runs out.
And tomorrow they still need to drink.
But Initiative 17 is already underway, and we’re still $1,800 short of $4,000.
So I’m asking you to do two things:
Donate if you can. And if you can’t — help us find someone who can.
Take our Linktree. Send it to somebody outside Substack. Show them the videos. Show them the receipts. Show them sixteen completed initiatives. Show them what a few hundred dollars actually becomes on the ground.
Because we’ve already built the infrastructure. We have teams in Gaza. We have the trucks. We know the communities. We document the work.
What determines how much water goes out now is how much money comes in.
Please help us close that $1,800 gap.
As long as Palestinians are standing there with empty containers, GFF will keep trying to fill them.
Water is life. Help us keep it moving.
