Threads of Hope: How One Widow's Hands Are Rebuilding a Future in Gaza

There is a tent in the Orphans’ Camp that has flooded more times than its walls can remember. This is where Hanaa Shalouf lives. And it is where, against all odds, she is building something new. 

Hanaa was 31 when the war forced her family to flee Rafah on foot. She walked beside her husband and their four children searching for anywhere safer than home. In the Ariba area, her husband was killed, and in an instant, Hanaa became a widow and her children became orphans. 

The only person standing between her family and destitution was Hanaa herself. 

Instead of surrendering to grief, Hanaa started searching for a way to rebuild. She watched other women in the camp join a vocational training program in weaving and embroidery, and saw something shift in them: purpose returning, a moment of relief carved out of hardship. She decided that would be her path too, the first thread in a story now shared by 50 women across Gaza facing the same reality. 

A Program Built for Women Like Hanaa 

Recognizing that widows are among the most economically vulnerable people in Gaza, a Zakat Foundation of America program was designed with one goal: to turn survival into self-sufficiency. It didn't just offer training; it built a complete pathway from vulnerability to independence. 

• Careful Selection: 50 widows were chosen using strict vulnerability criteria, ensuring women like Hanaa were the first given this chance. 

• Real Skills, Fast: Across three training groups, the women learned professional knitting and handcrafting techniques meant for immediate use. 

• Tools to Build a Business: Every woman received a Starter Kit (wool, needles, and design templates), to launch home-based production right after training. 

• A Market Built Around Them: Rather than leaving these women to find buyers in a shattered economy, Zakat Foundation of America built the market for them. Their handmade products are purchased directly and distributed as winter essentials to orphans and displaced families. 

• Dignity, Restored: Women once defined by loss are now active contributors to their community's recovery. 

• The Impact: 50 widows trained and equipped, and roughly 250 family members now living with a stable income at home. 

A central Showroom is being built to showcase the women's work to local buyers. Product Display Corners are launching in clothing stores across Gaza, integrating these women into the commercial market as businesswomen, not aid recipients. A Grand Closing Ceremony was held to honor all 50 graduates.

Hanaa's dream is simple yet powerful: to open her own small exhibition selling the products she weaves, so she never again has to wonder how she'll feed her children.

Thread by thread, she is proving that even in the ruins of war, a mother's determination can still create warmth for her children, and for the others beside her.

Through programs like this, resilience no longer stands alone; it is met, supported, and multiplied, turning 50 individual acts of survival into a movement of dignity and hope across Gaza.