Please consider helping Ayman Nijim to go back to Gaza with a master’s degree

Last week we ran an appeal to help Ayman Nijim complete his Master’s in Vermont. This is a follow-up appeal.

Ayman Nijim has worked in Gaza developing programs to help the children of Gaza heal. He’s also managed classes for Gaza women to help children heal.
Ayman is here in the US ready to start a Masters program in Vermont that will give him additional tools help the children of Gaza heal in a culturally-appropriate way.
Ayman needs a little more than $10,000 to do it.
We’ve got only 6 days left to help him do it. To help Ayman help the children of Gaza to heal.
I got a small inkling of the trauma the children of Gaza endured during Operation Cast Lead when I traveled into Gaza with a CodePink delegation five weeks after that brutal assault. I also came to know from my post-visit emails and Skype calls with a few of the young women I met during my time there how difficult it was for those in Gaza to get help due to the stigma of “mental illness” and a variety of other factors.
People like Ayman are desperately needed to help the next generation heal. Not only from the trauma of the military assaults and the brutality of the siege, but also from the trauma of being abandoned by most of the world*.
I made a contribution last week after reading about Ayman on this site.
Today, after checking the amount raised thus far– $10,000 to go– I doubled my contribution.
Perhaps others will do the same.
For those who’ve not yet given, please do. Give any amount, but please give as generously as you can (and then, ideally, double it!).
The IndieGoGo page by which to donate is here.
Our donations aren’t just helping Ayman Nijim. They’re helping the children of Gaza.
Post Script: In February of 2011, I wrote a piece about the post-trauma trauma in Gaza for an Amnesty International Poets & Writers call on the UN to take up the Goldstone Report recommendations. You can hear a recording of that short segment of the program here, in the third segment on the page. One of the children I quote in my piece [from The Gaza Monologues] is Mohammad Qasem, age 15: “All I know is that we’re living in a cage…a prison. Kids are dying in front of their mothers’ eyes, hearts are crying for them and screaming in the loudest voice, but no-one hears. No-one’s heart softens and no-one seems to care.”
Help show Mohammad, and all the children of Gaza, that we care. Let’s send Ayman back to Gaza next year with his Masters, and with more tools to help the children heal.