06/16/2026
They tell you change starts with a plan. Mine started with a window.
In 2014, I stood on a balcony in Rafah and watched my own city empty out — families carrying their lives on their backs, children who suddenly had nowhere to be children. I wasn’t a visitor to that scene. I’m Mohammed Kamal Abu Siam, and that was home.
I was sixteen. I had no organization, no budget, no plan — just three friends and a refusal to look away. We emptied our pockets and found about thirty dollars between us.
And the first thing we bought wasn’t food. It wasn’t medicine. It was toys.
People didn’t understand. But I knew something simple: before you feed a body, you have to remind a child that they’re still a child. So we walked into a shelter full of kids who had lost everything, and we gave them back one small piece of childhood.
That day didn’t feel like the beginning of anything. It just felt necessary.
But that one instinct — refusing to accept that someone else’s crisis isn’t yours — became Lifeblood. From three friends in Rafah to a foundation reaching more than 2,000 families every month across Gaza and Egypt. Food. Clean water. Education. Psychosocial care. Registered in Canada and the United States. Palestinian-led, from the very first day.
We never waited outside the crisis for permission to help. We were built inside it.
Eleven years later, that’s still the only promise I make: that no family stands alone, and no child is ever just a number.
This is Lifeblood. Humanity, in motion.
— Mohammed Kamal Abu Siam, Founder
Scenes visually reconstructed — our story, retold.
Gaza Palestine Rafah
