In Gaza, scouts' community-building and survival skills are a new lifeline

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/26/in-gaza-scouts-community-building-and-survival-skills-are-a-new-lifeline

In Gaza, scouts’ community-building and survival skills are a new lifeline

The Palestinian Scouts Association, once a recreational outlet, is deploying volunteers to help people displaced by war

Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem
Mon 26 Feb 2024 11.10 EST

Sahar Abu Zeid was perhaps an unlikely member of the Gaza City branch of the Palestinian Scout Association. She first got involved in 2017, aged 25, shortly after finishing an accounting degree, and quickly fell in love with the outdoor lifestyle and sense of community the organisation provided. Before the new war between Hamas and Israel, scouting was one of the only affordable and accessible recreational outlets in the isolated Palestinian territory, she said. Now, the practical and teamwork skills Abu Zeid learned are being put to use in previously unimaginable circumstances.

“Fire-starting, outdoor cooking, setting up tents, knotwork, improvisation using basic materials … these are all skills we are practising and teaching now in Gaza’s displaced communities,” she said in a phone call from Rafah, to where more than half of the strip’s population of 2.3 million has been displaced.

The Palestinian Scout Association is one of several youth-oriented organisations that have stepped up to help Gaza’s desperate population cope with life in makeshift shelters in winter conditions, the collapse of the healthcare system and a lack of food and clean water. One in four people are now experiencing extreme hunger.

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In Rafah, a town on the Egyptian border that is now the last place of relative safety in Gaza, and Deir al-Balah, in the centre, about 150 scout volunteers aged 18 to 40 are bulk-cooking and distributing the food that is available and helping to make tents warmer, more waterproof and more windproof, according to Ahmed Sarhan, the association’s assistant secretary general. The scouts are also teaching basic first aid and safety measures, such as dealing with unexploded ordnance.

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