We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Let’s Help Care for Gaza’s Orphans w/ Our Friend Akram Ibrahim

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

We’re coming together today to support Gaza’s wounded children with no surviving parents — Donate whatever you can now: https://pcrf1.app.neoncrm.com/forms/pcrf-laocie-orphan-sponsorship-2025 ��  There is no such thing as other people’s children.  We must care for the children of Gaza like they’re our own—because they are. Our friend Akram Ibrahim is a Palestinian American volunteer with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF). He and his family have worked tirelessly for decades to raise awareness of the plight and beauty of the Palestinian people.   Akram shares what ceasefire means to him as someone who has spent his life fighting for Palestine and Palestinian lives.    TO SUPPORT THE WOUNDED ORPHANED CHILDREN OF GAZA TODAY, DONATE NOW:  https://pcrf1.app.neoncrm.com/forms/pcrf-laocie-orphan-sponsorship-2025    Donations will go directly to PCRF, with Glennon and Abby matching the first $100,000.  Together, we can channel our heartbreak into action, and care for our children.  Akram’s list of Palestinian artists and businesses to follow and support:  - @houseofpalestine: resource sharing Palestinian culture, heritage, and traditions to visitors in San Diego. If you would like to find a Palestinian restaurant/business/creator/etc in your area, you can reach out to them directly.  - @hintoftatreez: studio for Palestinian embroidery apparel, called Tatreez, plus how-to kits and workshops - @jenanmatari: Palestinian author who just released her children's book, "Everything Grows in Jiddo's Garden" - @elfunoun_troupe: one of the most famous Palestinian dance troupes in Palestine. Follow their page @friendsofelfunoun to support them and learn Dabke (folk dance) around the US when they come for their 2026 tour.  - @paliroots and @paliapparel: studios designing and selling Palestine-inspired clothing - @knafehqueens: shop for award-winning Knafeh (Palestinian dessert) - @sababafalafelshop: authentic falafel shop based out of Anaheim, with a clothing brand that donates 50% of proceeds to humanitarian relief in Gaza: @westbankhoodie - @jerusalemroastery: destination for nuts, spices, snacks, desserts straight from Palestine - @sawasocal: SoCal-based organization for Palestine cultural events & workshops Follow We Can Do Hard Things on: Youtube — @wecandohardthingsshow   Instagram — @wecandohardthings TikTok — @wecandohardthingshow

Hi Pod Squad. It's us, obviously. And what I want to tell you about this episode is that this is one of those very special moments that this community has over the last 20 years come together for again and again and again. That moment for us repeatedly has been that we remember that we not only, we don't just show up for each other to care for each other. We show up for each other because the care for each other has always and forever will spill out to people we don't even know. So we have this constant refrain and belief that there is no such thing as other people's children, which has led us over time to show up for communities all over the planet. Together, we have raised $56 million.

Every penny of that has been delivered, invested in human beings that need it and deserve. it. And today we are doing that again. You might remember that recently we did an episode with our friend Dr. Ahmad who serves in Palestine to heal. And after that episode you all raised, I think was close to $200,000. Abby and I gave $100,000 in addition to that. And I think we were able to send the healers in Palestine. What was it? Does anyone, Amanda, do you have that number? Three hundred and thirty eight thousand dollars today you just are going to want to listen to this conversation because it is with our dear friend akram ibrahim he is a palestinian american who volunteers for an organization called pcrf which is the palestinian children's relief fund

an incredible organization with all the things four stars on charity navigator the whole shebang that has been serving Palestinian children for a very, very long time. In fact, Amanda, Together Rising, over 30 years, and Together Rising has been investing as early as 2021 during a bombardment in the West Bank. And they really specialize on medical care for children. And they're such a huge mass of children who are impacted, wounded, amputated by the decades of bombardment there. And so that is, they're laser focused on that. And they have very cool programs like this camp ability where they bring kids who are amputees to go and

have camaraderie and and build themselves back up and they also pull kids who need it out of Palestine to get the care they need and return them there and they've been doing it for 30 years amidst all of this so even though we're recording this and it's coming to you in a couple weeks so it is as of recording this there is a ceasefire in effect but they have been working throughout bombardments through ceasefire for decades. And so they're able to deliver this healing work regardless of how the ceasefire ends up going. So what we're doing today, and you're going to want to listen to the end, we're hearing from the hilarious, warm, beautiful, I could listen to him for Days Akram.

What we're also doing is there is a new category of child in Palestine. Doctors Without Borders have created a label for a certain population of children, and that label is W-C-N-S-P. What that is, when organizations like Doctors with Borders are permitted inside, find these children who have been hurt from the bombs. There are many of them now who are wounded. and have no parents or family left to help them. So their designation is a wounded child, no surviving parent.

Akram explains that there's often no surviving family, that Palestinian families for generations have come together to help and protect children who have lost their parents from bombs, but now the families aren't so decimated that they're not even left, and these children are truly alone in the world. the world and today we are coming together to say in fact they are not alone in the world that we will together step into this gap that we will provide funds to Palestinians to provide for these children so we will not be taking them out of Palestine we will not be we will be sending funds

so that we've always done together rising so that the communities who know these children who love these children who are these children can provide the support needed. Every penny that is given today will go directly toward serving these children, the WC's NSPs. Abby and I will be matching the first 100,000. Listen, if you do believe that we belong to each other, if you do believe that we can do hard things, if you do believe that there is no such thing. as other people's children, then we know to believe it's not enough to act. We are what we do. So press the link.

If you can give, give every penny will go to these babies. The link will be in the YouTube show notes. It'll be in the audio show notes of wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can find it on any of our social media pages. And now we give you a real TR, as our dear friend Allison's mom always says. I don't know. That means treat. And I'm not sure why that we use that abbreviation because it's longer than just saying treat.

But for you, we have a real TR, which is Akram Ibrahim, okay? He is our friend. He is a Palestinian American from Atlanta. He's based in Southern California. Lucky for us. Akram is currently volunteering as the PCRF chapter president for L-A-O-C-I-E. That's Los Angeles Orange County, Inland Empire. He's held many speaker and volunteer positions with PCRF and other PCRF.

Palestine-related non-profits, all with the intended purpose of furthering the Palestinian cause and elevating Palestinian voices for humanitarian, cultural, and educational efforts. Pod Squad, welcome our friend Akram. How are you? I'm better now that Akram is here to chat with us because I love Akram's chats. I know. He's such a good news. You guys are awesome. And by the way, I've just spent the last two weeks on the road.

I got home last night. So, like, we did our sound check yesterday. I was in Salt Lake before that was in Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, and Dallas since I saw you guys last. Oh, my gosh. Well, I have had a similar situation. I've been in my living room and then my kitchen and then my bedroom and then I go to my bathtub and then I go back to my kitchen. And it's like, I never even know where the hell I am, Ma'Krum. I don't know how you do it.

I think Glennon has probably actually traveled the same amount of miles inside her home that she just goes back and forth to all the different places it's amazing i have great adventures akrum great adventures just all within these walls well the pod squad should know first of all that akram is our friend we met at a protest at a block the bombs protest in orange county um i just i just i remember i think we just sat we just stood and chatted for a while at that and then we decided to be friends and then you came over to our house and we sat for hours and hours with Abby and Chase and you told us stories about your life and your work and we decided we just wanted to be friends with you forever and so then I called my sister and said you must meet

Akram and here we are no it was awesome it was it was totally random right my friend Omar was like hey you got to meet this lady Glenn and she wants to help Palestinian kids I was like all right great so I went and introduced myself as I was on my way way out and you're like hey we should talk about this you should come over and we should talk about this for real which was awesome like it was totally out of the blue I just happened to OC that day and it worked out perfectly yeah it was the best I just shout out to Omar Omar all roads lead to Omar freaking love him I mean Omar is so fun and wonderful and maybe once every couple weeks we get a video of Hakim his son throwing the football this is an

He coaches. Anyway, this is a whole other story. But he and Abby have a lot of sports. And you're sportsy too. Yes, he is. Oh, yeah. When I left, when I left y'all's house, I showed the picture to all the girls that I trained because I train high school soccer players on the side. And I was like, oh, yeah, I was just hanging out with Glenn and Abby. They're like, oh, wait, who are you, what are you talking about? Oh, yeah, me and Abby Wambach. No big deal. Like, it's fine. I love it. So good. Thanks for being so cool, babe. Yeah, you're welcome. You're welcome. Maybe waitful or with the high school community of San Marcos, California. Yes. You're welcome. Akram, you're welcome. Akram, tell us a little bit. Just put us in place right now. So many of us are paying close attention to the ceasefire. What does it mean to you? What's happening? What's on the ground? What do you want us to know about that?

Sure. So number one, I appreciate you all having me on today. I mean, it's really great to see you all. Amanda, really good to meet you. for the first time, but really excited to be here as a Palestinian and as your friend and is just somebody local in California, right? So it's been, it's been awesome so far. And before I start, I want to say I'm speaking as a volunteer, as a Palestinian, anything that I say, I now represent a couple organizations here in Southern California. Anything that I say is representative myself. I'm going to speak on behalf of some of the organizations too, and we'll get into that. But I want to make sure that I'm going to give my perspective as a Palestinian, grew up in America, born in America. And I want to make sure that I put that out there in the beginning

because, again, it's, it's a tricky time right now for nonprofits. It's a tricky time right now, just in general in the world. So I want to make sure that I give that little disclaimer as, you know, I'm a, I'm a volunteer. I'm just somebody who's trying to help. And that's really what it is. And as far as what we want to know now, like with the ceasefire, with everything going on, we're happy that we have a relief in the bombing in Gaza right now, right? right? But I want to make sure that people know also that ceasefire for Gaza does not mean it's the end of the line for what we're working on. It's really the beginning because a lot of times people try to separate Gaza from the West Bank and really Palestinians are Palestinians.

So Palestinians in Gaza were going through the brunt of the action for the last two years that we've watched, but also, you know, Palestinians in the West Bank have been going through it for for years as well. My mom is there right now. So I'm getting, you know, daily updates from my friends, my family that are there in the West Bank, you know, the people that are in are happy that there is relief for now, but also we don't know what tomorrow holds. So our goal and what we wanted to talk about is how we can be involved because Palestine definitely needs all of us, Palestinians, non-Palestinians, anybody who cares or wants to be involved because really realistically, this was the beginning, not the end, if that

makes sense. One of the things that every time we talk about Palestine, we remind people or ask guests to remind people. There are still many Americans who have this idea that this nightmare genocide began as a reaction to the horrific October 7th Hamas attacks. And so it's important to constantly remind people, as you mentioned, this is not the end but the beginning, that October 7th was not the beginning of this. From your perspective, what was the beginning of,

this nightmare. I'm going to use a phrase today that I'm going to keep using that I use with a lot of my friends who are starting to learn. And again, everybody knows I'm Palestinian. We joke around that my number one personality trait is that I'm Palestinian, that if I was getting kidnapped by somebody, they'd let me go really quickly because I just talk my talk to their head about Palestine. And then they'd get out of here, like, we're done. I even, I had a offsite with my company yesterday. And one of the things that they asked is an icebreaker is that question, what would you talk about to get a kidnapper to let go of you. And I was like, Palestine. And then I sent the screenshot of the slide to my family. And I was like, what do you guys think I said? They're

like, yeah, Palestine. So this is basically my entire personality trait. Every shirt that I have is a Palestine shirt. The books on my bookcase are Palestinian books. We like to elevate Palestinian voices because, again, this is not brand new for us. So the phrase that I'll use is pay attention to when you started paying attention. Right. People are paying attention now. And it's like, oh, wow, like, this is crazy. What I'm seeing on the news, what I'm seeing on the news, what I'm seeing on my social media is wild. But again, obviously history didn't start October 7th, you know, organizations have been a part of have been involved in Gaza and the West Bank and Palestine

in general for the last 30 years, 40 years, like people have been on the ground doing work forever. So, I mean, I went to my first protest when I was 11, 10, 11 years old. Like we're talking back, you know, 2000, 2001, right? So I know that's how we met and that's how we got connected just because we were out in the community, being a part of the community. but again, I've been doing this for 25 years now, right? And that's just me as myself, as a kid that my mom and, you know, my mom took me and my

siblings to these events to make sure that we knew we were Palestinian, that we knew what was happening to our families overseas, was not great. I also lived in Palestine in 2002, and I saw a lot of this firsthand, right? Like I went through checkpoints. You know, I've seen the restricted movement. And again, back then in the early 2000s, was a tough time, obviously, just like it is right now for some people. So it hasn't changed, but what's changed is how people are paying attention.

So what I tell everybody is pay attention when you started paying attention. We can go into the whole history, and that's a whole different podcast if we wanted to talk about the history of the 80 plus years of, you know, Palestinians going through this, of, you know, whether it's displacement, different communities. We're not going to get into that today because that's a whole three hour long conversation plus that we can get into. But what I will leave people with is to pay attention when you started paying attention because that is the phrase.

because I'm thankful now people are paying attention. I'm thankful people are talking about us. We are trending. Like being Palestinian and talking about the Palestinian cause is cooler now that it ever has been. It's really unfortunate why we're cool to talk about. And it's really unfortunate that I'm good at talking about this stuff because I have to do it so often. Our goal is that one day I can stop talking about this and just talk about the fun things like our culture full time. Right.

Like our dance, our music, our food, our hospitality, all that stuff is what we want to focus on. but we can't lose sight of the humanitarian peace, which is what we'll talk about later. And all these other pieces of the puzzle that need to be solved first before we can get into just having fun about being Palestinian. Yeah. So when, but we won't, we won't, this is not the podcast for it. I understand that. But just to say what you were protesting when you were a child, what you're talking about

that was going on that was requiring all of this activism is the occupation, is the Israeli occupation of the land that belonged to the Palestinians. at that time. That's what you're talking about, correct? Yeah. So like I said, I've been going through checkpoints since I was 11 years old in the West Bank. We've been driving through like the settlements since I was 10 years old in the West Bank. You know, my parents both were born in Palestine and they have restricted movement when they're there, right? So like my mom actually just got her birth certificate the other day while she was overseas. She got a copy of it. On the birth certificate where

it says hospital, it says fee al-bait, which means in the house because she was literally born on the balcony of her, my grandparents' house. So she's born like in the, the village. She's from the village. My dad's house. So my other grandfather's house is down the street. So my grandfather, my grandparents have been in Palestine for generations. And over time, you know, the land has gotten smaller. Movement's been restricted. You can't really go town to town very easily, which makes relief efforts harder and harder sometimes because you have to try to transport things between different checks and balances and approvals that you may or may not get as well. So that's the global picture of Palestine, if you will. And like I said, that's why I like to make it about

not just Gaza, not just the West Bank, because Palestinians exist in the entire region, and Palestinians as a whole need to be elevated and spoken about because otherwise that's how we slowly, you know, fade away, unfortunately. Yeah. And when you're talking about checkpoints and resources coming in humanitarian, it is correct to say that for decades, Israel has controlled anything that comes into Palestine, anything that goes out of Palestine, movement of Palestinian people within their own land, and you reference settlement, so I want to make sure that people understand that there are

people who have lived generationally on land in Palestine are faced with a situation that Israeli, quote unquote, settlers will come and forcibly remove the people that have lived there for generations and set up their own houses, removing Palestinian people by force from land that they have lived on generationally. Yes. Yep. So that's the settlement project within the West Bank. There's about 700,000 settlers within the West Bank.

But a really easy example of kind of the situation is how we enter Palestine. So like when I go to the West Bank, there's two ways to get in. You either fly in through the airport in Tel Aviv or you go in through Amman Jordan and you cross through the we have a border crossing and depending on the passport you have depends on how you can get in so we don't have an airport so you can only get in between one of the two borders each one has its own challenges whether it's checks through the airport um i usually get private screening like my VIP status if you will so i get you know my my entry through there sometimes this year we entered through the border in jordan and again that comes with its own challenges

and some people are stuck choosing one or the other and they can't can't do what they can to get in to get home. My mom was going in a couple weeks ago because she came with me, went back. She got to the border. It just got closed down. So she was there for four and a half hours waiting in Jordan to try to get in. They didn't open it up. They didn't know when it was going to open up. She ended up going to my aunt's house and I'm man, flew backwards to Dubai, Dubai to Tel Aviv, and then entered through the airport at that point. So she had the privilege, the ability, the means to be able to do that. Not a lot of Palestinians can have, that time-wise financially or even the right paperwork to do that. So it just depends on, you know,

your look at the draw of the paperwork sometimes and the luck of the draw of who's working that checkpoint that day. Yeah. Yeah. So and, and, you know, the international community has decided that this was all illegal and given Palestinians a right of return, which has never once been enforced. So that's where we are now. Can you tell the Pod Squad and my sister. I'm dying for you to, for her to hear. You sat on our couch and you brought a notebook. And there was a picture of little... Oh my God. In I think elementary school by a little flag that said Palestine. I just need you because I also feel like the story tells us so much about your mom and I'm obsessed with your mom. So can you tell the Pod Squad that story? Sure. And by the way,

this is not a prop. These are pictures that I keep on my desk as a reminder. So I lived in Palestine in sixth grade. We were there for seven months. My mom thought it was a good idea to take her four kids, move overseas for a little bit to make sure we got to know our grandparents, our land, our culture, just kind of immerse ourselves in there. So she took our books from the school is here. We did homeschooling for six months there. Great time. Even with all the problems that the region had at the time and the lack of movement, we weren't able to go out much in those six months. We had a great time. But we came back. After I told all my friends, hey, I was in Palestine, I was in my grandfather's house.

And my mom used to come to my school all the time and bring her Palestine box to teach our friends where we were from. I grew up in northern suburbs of Georgia. We were one of the first Palestinian families people knew up there. We were one of the first Muslim families people knew up there. So a lot of my friends had never met a Palestinian and maybe never knew what a Muslim was before. So my mom kind of brought us into the schools and she was really involved with our schools. So my mom's great. She doesn't know I'm on the call today.

I told her that I needed information to like prep for a call, but she didn't know why. So hi, Mom. Hi, Mom. So seventh grade, we had an international night. Our schools used to let each of the kids come in and represent their country in the cafeteria. It was like a nighttime event. You have a little table set up with food from your country, maybe a poster board. And there's like a little flag ceremony where everybody gets to walk in with their flag as like a little flag ceremony, right?

Really exciting times. I was in seventh grade. And I was like, mom, we have this thing. So we signed up to go represent. Palestine in this event. I went to the rehearsal and I showed up and there was no Palestine flag there. There was Jordan. And I was like, hey, there's no Palestine. They're like, oh, no, you're from Jordan. So that's what the teacher told me. I was like, no, I'm like, I just came back from Palestine. My parents are from Palestine. I'm from Palestine. Like, what are you talking about?

Like, no, no. The West Bank is Jordanian territory. So at the end of the day, you can't represent Palestine. You can only represent Jordan. And this is a seventh grade teacher telling me a seventh grade. I'm 12, 13 years old at this time. So I went home and I was like, hey, mom, I went to the rehearsal and there is no Palestine flag. And my mom is a very calm Palestinian Arab mom, went down to the school. And like, this isn't happening. Like we just came back from Palestine.

My kids are Palestinian. What are you talking about? So after a little bit of back and forth with the school, they let me represent. But I keep this picture on my desk on purpose. So if you see this little flag right here, I didn't have a big flag. I got to walk in with a little flag. And then more importantly, if you see I was next to Pakistan and the Philippines, they let me represent the Palestinians. So I didn't get to represent Palestine because if Palestine wasn't a place, I got to represent the Palestinian people.

So that's actually a very important distinction in the competition. I keep this picture on my desk at all times because it's a rinder of the monster they created, I guess, because since then, I've been doing this nonstop for 20 years now, like talking about being Palestinian and why Palestine is a place and why I made it. a big distinction in the beginning to not just make this about Ghazans, not just to make this about people in the West Bank. Like Palestinians are everywhere. And there's Palestinians in the West Bank. There's Palestinians in Gaza. There's Palestinians all over the world. But Palestine is a place. My parents were born there. My grandparents were born there. My great grandparents were born there. And our goal is to keep elevating our stories. So people know that we do exist. We did exist. And we will exist. So that was part of my seventh grade training right here,

which was, I keep this picture. This is from February 27, 2003, and we had to go develop pictures. And this thing at my desk at all times, I hate that I keep using this as a prop every time I talk to somebody new. And my mom, every time I tell this story, my mom was like,

you're telling that story about the flag again. But it paints a picture, right? It does. Because back then, and back then we didn't have the support that we have now. And that's why I'm really thankful, you know, Glennon for you and Abby,

Amanda, for you now that I can get to know you, too. Back then, we didn't have support. We didn't have people backing us up. We just, people just kind of let it go, right? There were situations that happened in the world back then that if people didn't talk about it, it just got wiped under the rug. I actually got into, like, activism and speaking work through Rachel Corey's parents. Rachel Corey was killed in 2003.

She was in Rafah blocking a home from being demolished. She got run over. I mean, really sad story, but her cousin was a professor at Emmer University. And we got involved when they came to Atlanta. And, you know, they got us involved in, like, the speaking and things like that. because I was a young kid from the Atlanta area, also lived in Palestine. So I was able to speak to both sides as like a kid that said, hey, my name is Akram and I saw a gun pointed in my face at one point last year, right?

Like that's a crazy sentence for a 12 year old to say. But now we're able to take these stories and tell people that are actually listening now, which I'm very, very thankful for. I think we talked when we were at your house, guys. I don't care when people get on board. I'm just glad people are here along for the ride now because we can't do it by ourselves. We've tried to do it by ourselves for so long. and now we have people who are hearing us,

people who are elevating Palestinian stories, Palestinian voices, and it's really helping us kind of grow this movement of people who know Palestine exists and that Palestinians are humans, we teach life, we want to love, we want to learn, we want to grow, we want our kids to grow, and that's kind of the real beauty of being Palestinian. And now it's time to thank the companies who allow you to listen to We Can Do Hard Things for free.

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yourself, run, lift, sculpt, push, and go. Explore the new Peloton cross-training tread plus at OnePeloton.com. Akram, when you talk about the distinction between carrying the flag that says Palestinians versus carrying the flag that says Palestine and your insistence that Palestine is a place, Can you talk to us about the importance of that, the literal and figurative importance of being able to claim a place that is acknowledged and exists? Not only exists, but exists, it is understood that it exists. One of the things that I really harp on is people knowing where they come from.

A lot of the events that I do, I spend a lot of time. talking to these parents who have young kids, whether they started to now or don't, I want them, their kids to be able to say, hi, my name is Akram. I'm from Palestine. Not my dad was Palestinian. My grandfather was from Syria. My great uncle was from Lebanon. I want them to be able to say, I'm from Palestine. And realistically, the more generations that pass through, if Palestine continues to shrink and then people lose the connection with the land, then all of a sudden, Palestinians becomes a people who can live anywhere or can be from anywhere versus Palestine, which is a place. Like, I'm a Palestinian from Palestine, right? My grandmother is a Palestinian

from Palestine. We're from a specific town in a specific place. We have a home. We have life. We have roots. We have land. All that is in a place versus saying that, hey, I'm Palestinian. It could be a theoretical. I'm Palestinian from anywhere. I'm Palestinian American. I'm Palestinian from Chile. I'm Palestinian from the UK, it becomes a adjective versus a place, if that makes sense. And it's such gaslighting. It's like if you're admitting there's Palestinians, but you're not admitting, admitting that, like, I'm a Virginian, but there's no Virginia. Like that's, but it's also very strategic.

If your overall goal is to eliminate a place and to normalize the idea that these people can exist without their place, then you become someone like Netanyahu who can say, what's the problem? Why don't they just go somewhere else? They can still be Palestinian somewhere else because I want their land. So, I mean, it is a very strategic move to separate a people from their place. And that's why I take that phrase when people say, oh, how come, you know, Jordan or Egypt aren't taking more people in? Number one, they are taking people in. But the more important point is why should they, right? Like, why should the Palestinians leave Palestine?

The people in Gaza already were refugees from 1948, right? So a lot of them have already been moved once, and a lot of them are saying we're not moving again. And a lot of these people that are in Gaza, they have roots. They have a life. At the end of the day, yes, there was siege for a lot of years, but people within Gaza lived okay. Like, they didn't live great.

They couldn't go a lot of places. They didn't have an airport. They still had to cross, and a lot of things were controlled by the Israeli. security or Israeli government. But at the end of the day, it's funny when you talk to somebody from Gaza, when they talk to somebody from the West Bank, they look at us like, wow, you guys can't move around within the West Bank. You have checkpoints, right?

Like, they have a different type of struggle, right? Like, it's still a Palestinian struggle, but it's a different type of struggle. But even when we talk to people from Gaza, the first thing they say is they want to go back. I spent the weekend actually in Chicago for the Chicago Marathon. And one of the girls that was there is 15 from Gaza. She's here from treatment. And she doesn't want to stay in America. as great as America is and as much as we have here,

her home is not here. She wants to go back. Everybody at the end of the day wants to go back to where they come from, where they feel comfortable, regardless of the beach, she's in California or the beautiful buildings in Chicago. At the end of the day, home is home. So that's why whenever I go back,

people look and are you sure you want to go back right now? I was there a month ago, right? Flying in and not a great time to get in, but at the end of the day, home is home. I'm not going to not see my grandfather. I'm not going to not see my mom. I'm not going to not see our family, our friends, are our life that we have there too.

And that's the importance of making sure Palestine is a place that we keep going back to. I can't go back there all the time. I don't have the paperwork too. And also, like, my life is here. My work is here. So I live here in America. And I'm happy to be American. America has given me a lot of opportunities.

But at the end of the day, I'm Palestinian. And whenever people ask, I don't say my dad's from Palestine. No, no, I'm from Palestine. It's written on my face. It's written on my shirts all over my life. My license plate. There's no question about who. I am. Beautiful. What do you love about? You said the dream would be that one day you get to

just talk about the beauty of the Palestinian people and the culture and not this nightmare. So what do you love so much about being Palestinian and the Palestinian people? Objectively, we are just a hospitable people. It's part of the nature. It's part of the blood. It must be genetically coded or something, because at the end of the day, we all just want to gather. We're very simple people. We just want to hang out, drink some coffee, play cards, have family gatherings. And that's what the beauty of being Palestinian is. When I was overseas, we did nothing besides just hanging out on balconies or sitting outside

and just talking, right? Like, we are people that love to talk. We love to host. We love to be hospitable. We love to share our culture. We like to dance. We like to laugh. All these things are like basic, basic Palestinian.

structured lifestyle points of ours, right? I don't even know how to say it right like that. It is truly a beautiful culture. And we have artists, we have great thinkers. We have really, really smart people who have done awesome things for the world that have come from Palestine. And realistically, that's what we want to be able to share. We want to share that hospitality.

I'll give you an example. We were in Nablus. Nablus is the home of Knafha. Knaf is a very well-known Palestinian dessert. Okay? We couldn't go through one of the exits. It was closed off that day. We didn't know how to exit the town and get back to the highway to go back to our village.

So we asked a guy on the side of the road. He was driving a motorcycle. We say, hey, we're trying to get back to the highway to get back to our village. Can you help us out? Can you point us the right direction? I don't know who this person is. If I looked at him again, I won't be able to tell you who he was. He just said, follow me.

And what did we do? We followed this guy for 13 minutes on his motorcycle. He just weaved through the town, offside roads. We're like, I hope this guy's taking us the right place. It's right at the highway. So again, like Palestinians just want to help each other out, the, the fight that everybody does to pay the bill at the end. Like, it's a very, very generous culture. It's a very, very hospitable culture.

Everyone wants to help each other out. And that's what I want to make sure we anchor to and we focus on because that's the best part of our culture. We lived in Atlanta for a long, long time, 28 years in Atlanta, away from family, away from people we knew. But we found a community within our Arab and Palestinian community who were also moving to Atlanta as an internet. city getting to know each other. Over the years, my dad passed away. My mom was with me, so what did we do? We closed up shop in Atlanta and moved west to California. And the reason we moved west to California is because the town I bought a house in has 94 people from my mom's side of the family. That's not an estimate. That is not a overblown number. That is a day we sat and counted

that the households in this town here within 15 minutes of my house. So, and that's just my mom's aunts and uncles, my aunt, our cousins, close family members, all from like one grandfather. So I can send a text for people to come over for dinner, and we did that, you know, Ramadan last year. There was 117 people in my house. And they're not far, these aren't random people. These are just my mom's aunts and uncles, my aunts and uncles and all the families that come beneath them. So again, like that community aspect, you can't buy it. That community aspect is just knowing people have your back. We have drama just like everybody else because we're humans and humans have drama but at the end of the day like when push comes to shove we stand up for each other

we help each other out we back each other up and we support each other can you just tell us real quick about your mom and her sisters yeah so they're um so my mom and my aunts are wonderful people there's four of them total so my mom and three aunts they are all how do i say this nicely like they're like psycho in the best way we know it well I love them. They are awesome. They're all over the world. Well, three of them live in California technically now, but my mom's overseas right now with my other aunt. So tour overseas, two are in California. They are very involved. Like, they're family people. They are there to host. These people never have an off button. They are, their battery is always going. Like, one of my aunts had

a surgery. And like the next week, she's up and running and hosting people in her house. Like, you've got to slow down, lady. Like, what's happening? And then my aunt overseas. She's helping my aunt and my mom here doing things for, you know, House of Palestine, PCRF, different nonprofits we have here. So she's always going. And then my mom and my aunt who lives five minutes away from me, they're basically the same person. So I moved into a town, brought my mom and ended up with like both moms here. And my mom's overseas and I got my other aunt telling me what to do. I'm like, I'm in my 30s, man. You can't tell me you. But they're, they're both super involved with, you know, the different nonprofits we have.

They were basically the exact same person. They help each other out. Whenever we joke, like, oh, where's my mom? Oh, she's my aunt. Or they're on the phone together. Or they're working on something. They're cooking something up. Like, they're always on.

They are the reason that we are all brainwashed the way we are, like, as their kids. I mean, like, the other picture I keep on my desk is this is from that the protest that we had. So this is me as a kid. And there's my mom, like, making sure that we knew who we were and we knew what was going on. What do your signs say in that? I'm interested at like time stamping. What are the signs in that photo?

This one says that would have been how long ago? Yep. Stop the violence against Palestinians. And this picture was 2001, it looks like. Yeah, this is 0-1. This is Stop the Violence Against the Palestinians. The other one says, honk to stop the violence. So yeah, this was back in 01 that we were doing this.

So again, I keep this on my desk. My mom, my aunts are awesome. I love them. They are the reason we stay involved. I literally was on work trips this whole weekend, and we have an event coming up this coming weekend, and my aunt's calling me. I got a group chat with my mom. I got my other aunt calling me.

Like, it's a network of powerful ladies that, again, psycho in the best way, and I love them for it because they just keep going. They just one project to the next project and the next project, and then eventually they crash and fall asleep for a few hours, and they get up and do it all over again. Thank you for that. And thank you for my next memoir title. Psycho and the best. Akram, tell us about, I want to start talking about PCRF, how you all came to this organization, how somebody as brilliant and wise as your mom and fiery as your mom and her sisters end up choosing this organization to be one of the ones that they put their entire hearts and minds behind.

What is PCRF? Because it's one of the reasons we are here today. Yeah, no, and I really appreciate you letting me talk about PCRF. Again, as a volunteer, and that's what I wanted when you asked me who would be the right person to talk about this, I wanted to come from a volunteer perspective, right? I'm just a regular guy on the street that wants to help Palestinian kids. And that, again, comes from my mom, my aunts, my dad. You know, this is something we've been a part of for a long time. So PCRF is the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. We've been around for over 30 years now started in 1991 for people who just been.

wanted to help Palestinian kids, right? Started off by bringing a kid from Palestine to America for medical treatment. Over time, it's exploded into this great global organization, staff in Palestine, staff in the United States, chapters all over the country. So the way we got involved is we've been involved with PCRF for probably 17 years. My mom started off as a volunteer in the Atlanta area. She was, we were part of all the events. My sister was part of the youth committee when she was a kid.

We were all part of the different events we had in the Atlanta area. My mom was the president for the Atlanta chapter for a long time as a volunteer. My aunt is the current president for the San Diego chapter for the last several years. I'm actually the president for the L.A. chapter for L.A. O.C. and I. So it's become like a family business, right? But at the end of the day, we're all volunteers. My mom since then has started working for the PCRF. But for all of us, it's just been a volunteer project.

It's been something that we just wanted to help out. And for us, it started by just going to these events, right? You know, a kid would come to Atlanta for, you know, a burn victim needed to come get treatment here that they couldn't get there. So we'd bring kids to the states, they'd get treatment, host families would host them, and we'd get to talk to these kids from Palestine. So was that the main, the main goal of PCRF back then was to identify children who had been hurt by the, by anything?

It could have been anything. somebody who was hurt in a olive press accident okay right that one did not have anything to do with you know occupation or anything like that but it was a kid who needed treatment we couldn't give him treatment got it so there so they brought him here so palest prcrf has both stated goals it's the treatment abroad part but also the infrastructure and the help there so while we were bringing kids to the states we're also sending doctors over the years for medical missions in palestine whether it's doing missions and treating there or teaching doctors there as well we've done infrastructure projects where we've refurbished and rebuilt hospitals, medical centers.

We've built, you know, the first pediatric cancer unit in Gaza, the first public pediatric oncology and ICU in Bethlehem, right? Like, there's a lot of projects that have been going on over the years because in 30 years, obviously the need has grown. And that's why I like to say pay attention when he started paying attention to because, yes, we're talking about PCRF now, but we've also been in business for 30 years, why we needed to be in business for 30 years, right? It wasn't always only all of the press accidents.

Like there's been other things that, you know, whether it's from the occupation or whatever it is. And that's why, again, I wanted to speak from a volunteer perspective because I see the kids that come here. We get to know these kids. We hear their stories. And that's how we've been involved. But the way I started getting involved, we were just moving chairs for events. Like, we were the hired help, right? Because nonprofit volunteer work requires a lot of hands.

So the joke with all of our friends is that we just went to these events to move chairs. That's how it starts. That's how they get you, Akram. Well, the problem is I'm 34 now still moving chairs, so I haven't brought out of that, apparently. So we used to do events, and it was, like I said, a whole family affair. I'm the oldest of four. My mom was the president for the chapter, so we were at everything. We would host 5Ks in Atlanta, trivia nights in Atlanta.

We'd host a gala every year, like a benefit dinner. We'd get involved with a different community, so we'd support other organizations, too, because Palestine doesn't just need PCRF. It needs everybody working. So whether it's care or any of the other organizations that are also working for the Palestinian cause here and abroad. We want to make sure we supported the others, too, so that nobody was there by themselves.

We used to joke. My dad showed up an event one time. We were there early with my mom setting up. My dad walked in a little bit later. And somebody was like, oh, you didn't want to come with the rest of your family today. He goes, you know what? I donated my whole family to the PCRF. I'm walking in when I get here.

Fair. They're like, okay, that's fair enough. Like your four kids are over here moving chairs. So again, like over time, that's how it started. That's how we got involved. and now my brother who lives in Denver goes to the Denver events and he was just in Chicago this weekend

running with Team Palestine for PCRF in Chicago. My sister is back in Atlanta, she's involved with the Atlanta chapter. So like we have been a part of this for a long time because we started as kids. Because we saw the value, we saw the benefit. My parents instilled it into us

why we can't just help ourselves, we have to help other people. And if we can help other people, let's try to help our people that really need it because that was a way to number one be generous with our time, our money, our effort, but also it was being generous,

but also keeping us connected to our culture and our land and our background, right? So it was like the best of both worlds. I'm so glad that they got us involved in this because it's opened up the doors for everything else we've been a part of over the years. And now we have chapters all over the country, all over the world, right? We have chapters in Northern California

or like the Northwest, you know, down here in Southern California, we have New York, we have Chicago, we have in Texas, we have in Georgia. There's chapters all over. And actually, PCRF is one of the approved charities for the Chicago Marathon. So that's what I wanted to talk about today, too, because we just came back, right? Chicago Marathon, every year we get 80 runners.

We've grown over time. So start off with, I think, 10 runners that were approved entries. Now we're at 80 this year. So this year we had 80 runners. A lot of them are non-Palestinians. People just wanted to help out. And each one of the runners had to raise a certain amount of money for PCRF to be able to run with the team.

So I think the final count that I looked at right now was over $161,000 for a project. And this is all just people running for the Chicago. Marathon. So the last six years, I've actually gone out to Chicago the weekend they do the marathon and hang out with my friends because what we do is we have the 80 runners run. We get them a pasta near the night before. We get them all pumped up. We make signs for them. And then we bounce around the city during the race and like wave flags and playing music and cheer them on because we track them all in the app and we're just hanging out. Like it's a beautiful, beautiful day. I mean, we were there. I did 20,000 steps on Sunday and I didn't run the marathon. We just bouncing around

the city and jumping around one of our girls who's here for treatment her name is jena she's 15 from resa um her hand is cut here um her house got bombed in gaza she came here for treatment and she was there jumping around and hanging out and like this sweet kid is 15 years old and she is loving seeing you know every ring pass saying like go palestine team palestine because it wasn't just our runners that were supporting us hundreds and hundreds of people the entire day were high-fiving us coming and thanking us for being there and we were just there trying to hype them up and they're over here coming up to us and thanking us for being there. It was awesome. And again, most of them were non-Palestinian. So we told Jenna, like, look, isn't it crazy how

much support we have here now? And it was eye-opening because everybody just sees the news and sees what's happening. It's like nobody cares, but no, there are people who care. And this is how we reached them through our chapters, through our engagement, through our ability to be in the community and be, you know, productive and helpful and just nice people in the community. That's what it comes out to. I will tell you this. Like my mom told me this when I was 12 and it stuck with me forever. She goes like, you don't just represent your name. Other people get to represent themselves, right? Like maybe my neighbor, if he does something stupid, they'll be like, okay, John did something stupid. But if Akram does something stupid, that says something about my last thing, my family, my religion, and my

culture. So at the end of the day, and that's a really heavy thing to tell a kid, but it stuck with me, right? Like, I'm an ambassador, not just for myself, not just for my family. but for my culture, my people being Palestinian and for Muslims. Because at the end of the day, if I go to an event and I act a fool, somebody's going to say, hey, look at that angry Muslim over there. And I hate to say it like that. And I hate that's like where the world is. But it's the reality, right?

If I go out there and we're at this, you know, Chicago Marathon and I start, you know, pushing people around, all of a sudden, look, there's that angry Palestinian, right? So these are things that I had to take on when I was a kid. And now as an adult, I take that very seriously. and I want, you know, the younger kids who are coming up now to also stay involved. Whatever that means. Not everybody has money to be involved. Nobody has time to be involved.

But everybody can give in their way, whether it is time, money, resources, expertise, a prayer here and there. Like, there has to be something that everybody gives because over time, you can give more. As an aside, I just wonder if this, I was talking to one of my kids recently after I'd just gotten back from a meeting to prepare for Block the Bomb. So it was like me and I think six or seven months. mostly Palestinian men and I got home and my kid said so how wasn't I said I think I don't know this is like a final frontier for me I've never organized with these kinds of people and my kid said Palestinians and I said no men like I am having anyway I'll talk to you about this another time Akram but I I'm just having such an interesting experience it's my first experience

organizing with men, and it's so different than other experiences that I've had organizing near American men. But anyway, that's another story. So we'll table that. Yeah, we take that offline. I want to ask you, so right now you're talking to the Pod Squad, which is made up largely of a community of people that my sister and Abby and I have been doing life with for 20 years. We have always understood that art is a beautiful way to heal yourself and that it is also an incredible vehicle to create healing in the world and that when people feel seen and cared for they end up wanting to see and care for wider and wider circles of people and so over time we have collectively as a community raised $56 million for communities all over the world

The average donation has been $27. So this is people. So right now, we are, you're speaking to a group of people who are the ones who care. Sure. It's amazing. And care deeply about children. Children have always sort of been this mountain that this community is willing to die on. And so in terms of the children that PCRF over time has served,

the ones who are not being hurt by olive presses. But, I mean, it is true that Palestinian children are the highest, the amount of amputees in coming out of Palestine, children amputees are higher than anywhere else in the world. Is that something that PCRF has seen and are these children that you all have been healing and serving? Yes. So I can give a little bit of background on some of the projects we have.

And if anybody wants more information about the projects, PCRF.net has all of our projects, our annual reports. It's actually really cool that PCRF has actually had 12 years straight of top ratings on Charity Navigator, so four out of four stars, which is why we like to be involved with them too, because we like to know that what we're asking people money for is getting to where it needs to go. Because, again, as a volunteer, the way we raise money and the way we get these projects funded is I literally go out in the community and we ask people to help support these projects. That's what Chicago Marathon was, right?

Like, we called it in Amana, like a trust. So in Arabic, it's called Amana. This is like a trust that people are putting in us and people are putting in me. Okay, I know Akram. I trust him that this money is going to get to where it goes. And it's nice to have the backing of Charity Navigator to prove me right, essentially, right? Because I don't take that for granted. I know that, thankfully, I have a big mouth for this stuff.

And people have trusted me over the years to put their money behind projects. So PCRF has a lot of different projects ongoing. So the treatment of broad stuff is great. We bring kids to the states. They get medical treatment here. They go back to where they need to go. Right now, nobody can go back to Gaza yet. So a lot of these kids are going back to Egypt, for example,

and we're setting them up for a year in Egypt where we're paying for their rent, and we're helping them out for a year to kind of get on their feet, and then maybe when the border is open, they're able to go back home to be with the rest of their families. Now, as far as the other projects, so kind of to your point about the amputees that are local, Yes, Gazda is one of the highest recorded number of children amputees and recorded history now, right? So we have the Gaza amputee project.

And that's actually, I think, what the Chicago Marathon runners were raising money for. The 160K was tagged to that project, right? We have the orphan care project. We have, you know, nutrition that we're bringing to these communities. We have, you know, the hospitals that were also trying to rebuild there, too. So obviously, a lot of the hospitals have been hit. And a lot of these hospitals, we had wings in those hospitals, right? Rantisi Hospital was, you know, a pediatric hospital that we had work in.

There's, you know, different cancer units in different places within Gaza that have been hit. So what PCRF tries to do on the ground, too, is get operating rooms back online. You know, maybe we can't renovate the entire hospital yet. We want to make sure we get these hospital rooms back up and running that not even just PCR people are able to use, anybody's able to use, right? That's the thing. There's a lot of organizations working in Gaza right now, depending on who can get in, who can get materials in, It's all kind of outside of our control a lot of the time.

And that's why when you ask a ceasefire question in the beginning, you know, how do we feel? Like we feel good that things have stopped, but we still don't know what that means yet. Like, you see, I've put out a statement, you know, we're, we welcome it. We're obviously happy about it. You know, we've been operating in Gaza for over 30 years. But our main goal right now is like for these thousands of orphaned maimed and these kids with trauma, then we want to make sure that we're able to get these hospitals back up and running as much as possible,

restore pediatric initiatives as much as possible, you know, treating that malnutrition as much as possible and getting the rehab and the psychological support up and running too. And that's actually one of the things that I care most about too is the psychological support because these kids who have gone through, you know, five, six wars now sometimes if they're, you know, 18, 19, 20 years old, they've seen a lot. Even the younger kids have seen a lot. This last two years is going to change a lot of us here in America. So I can't imagine what it's doing to the people that saw it there. Right. So the psychological support is huge, especially for these kids that are orphaned now, for example, or these kids that lost a limb, like how do you live now with your new normal, right?

If you don't have a leg anymore, how do you live, how do you get by, how do you continue your life? If you don't have, you know, your parent, one or both, how do you continue? How do you move on? Because you don't move on, but you have to move forward. And we want these kids to be able to try to enjoy their life as a kid. Because that's the thing. When we talk about kids, I'm so glad your community cares about the kids in general because we want to have Palestinian kids grow up the same way that other kids get to grow up.

I grew up very privileged here in America in the suburbs of Georgia. I went to baseball practice. I went to soccer practice. My family was awesome. My friends were awesome. I never worried about my roof falling. I never worried about if I didn't have a meal. These are things that I never thought about as a kid.

And that's why now as an adult, we try to make sure we share awareness about what's happening in the kids of Gaza because these kids deserve the same life that I grew up with. and that's what we're trying to help out with you mentioned the kids that were orphaned and i have been um blown away and heartbroken to to learn the actual numbers and it feels awful to even say a number because these are human beings and lives and souls and families but um in the wake of the last two years of genocide, 32,132 children have lost their fathers. 4,417 children have lost their mothers. 1,918 children have lost both parents. So I gave Glenn in those numbers because I wanted to

kind of add to it as well. That was the numbers we had when we did a presentation for this, like at the end of last year actually oh shit yeah so those numbers are much higher now and it's unfortunate and that's just what we know so i hate to be dark and i hate to be like the mic drop moment right there but i gave you those numbers as kind of the lead in right now i believe the the estimates like over 40,000 i mean PCRF is supporting at least 7000 kids right now just like through our efforts on the ground in gaza so that's why these numbers Again, the numbers that there are, the kids that there are, the cost per kid too, everything's gone up. Right.

And that's the unfortunate thing. So again, I gave those numbers as a, here's a teaser, because I wanted to kind of bring where it is right now. And this is like as of September, it's over 7,000 kids that we're working with, the orphan kids in different communities, right? And there's a, there's a, it has become, it is such a crisis. There are so many children who are hurt and have no. parents to help them that there's a new term that the Palestinian community and the international community is now using. Tell us what that term is to describe these children. Yeah, and actually when you said that, it gave me chills like about to say it, right? That term is from doctors about

borders who have been operating in Gaza for the last two years. It's W-C-N-S-F. That stands for wounded child no surviving family that phrase didn't really exist before the last two years wounded child no surviving family wounded child no surviving family okay so that group of children is who we are here for today that is those children are who we as the pod squad are going to show up for now in this moment, the children who are wounded children with no surviving family. One of our operating principles is that there is no such thing as other people's children, which means there is, in some sense, surviving family, and that is us. Now is the time that we step in to provide not saving these kids, Akram, don't want to be taken out of Gaza. Is that correct?

we are not stepping in to take them out. We are stepping in to provide funds so that their Palestinian community and doctors can come around and support them. Is that correct? Yeah. So one of the biggest things I like to make sure I mention is that, again, PCRF does not relocate these kids, nor do we want to relocate these kids. At the end of the day, even the kids that come here for treatment are kids that eventually want them to go back to Palestine. Because again, this is now Akram's opinion and a lot of Palestinians agree with me. We want Palestinians to stay in Palestine. The more you take out the easier it is to be like this land is open let's move in so it's it's really frustrating that a phrase like that exists wounded child no surviving family and what's even more

crazy than we've ever seen before is in years past because again we've been through this before 2021 there was a war in gaza 2018 24 like there's been this has been ongoing for the last 20 years right when somebody loses their their parents before they're they're was enough family around that you know the family would take them in right away because again Palestinians one thing we do is reproduce a lot um you teach life i'm one of 30 cousins on one side i'm one of 30 cousins on the other side my cousins on one side have kids my aunt has nine kids i mean we we we have a we reproduce we it's great i love big families sorry that's i'm not trying to make a light of a tough situation but that's how we that's how we do it in the past

there was never a need for people to even bring up adoption, right? Like adoption wasn't like a common thing within the Raza community, the Palestinian community, but at the end of the day, remember we wanted the kids to keep their last name, keep their identity, and they had their family there, their uncle would take them in, their aunt would take them in, their grandparents would take them in. Now in this current situation, maybe a whole bloodline is gone, right? And the craziest thing is, you know,

we've been reading stories of these kids who get brought to the hospital and they're trying to find out who knows this kid, who's related to this kid and they can't find anybody so that's that's the crazy thing with you know big families like this they can't find a relative so a lot of things what a lot of times what PCRF is doing is supporting the communities that have orphans within the community right so it's not like we're finding you know this kid right here we're going to sponsor this kid we're sponsoring these communities that are helping provide care for maybe they have multiple orphans in their community that need food, medication, medical treatment, mental health support.

So that helps bring the resources and also helps, you know, take care of our staff that are there because, again, I'm a volunteer, but we have staff that works for PCRF that need to be able to continue to live. Things are expensive in Rheza right now because, again, trucks are getting in, not everything is getting in, so supply is still scarce throughout the entire strip. So, so yes, that's who we're trying to help. We're trying to help the kids in Razzah, so they stay in Rzda. You know, one of our recent posts on our, on our Instagram on the PCR

You know, there's a pilot in Adjadat camp right now where there's 91 orphans for them and like if they have a family member that they're living within this camp and they're getting orphan support from PCRF in like a specific camp too. So there's a lot of really good that's happening. It's unfortunate that it has to happen. But thankfully we have the teams in place that are able to help support these kids and support the communities so that it's not also a drain in the community too. Because right now it's a tough time for everybody in those like they're they don't know what's next, right? Like they don't know, they don't know some, I was talking to a guy on Sunday, he's from Reza, he was in Chicago with us. He was one of the simplest things that we don't know right now is where one person's

land starts and one person lands ended because it's been, it's been like mowed down. So these are just, these are basic things that the communities have to figure out. So we want to help these communities with at least one part of it where we can help the kids that happen to be with them in the communities while they figure out how to get back to living in like a structured society that they just haven't been able to for the last two years. And now it's time for our ads. If you're a dog person, you get it. I want to do everything I can for my beloved Seamus, especially anything that helps him

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It is also a huge open question, whether it is consistent with the end goals of a liberated and dignified Palestine. But can you talk to us about PCRF, how you have operated during the war? Because if I'm listening to this, this is going to go up to our people in a couple weeks. I want people to understand about your operations, both if the same. ceasefire holds and if it doesn't like how you how you get to the kids i know you're you're seriously embedded and have been doing work throughout um the bombings so um i guess how does it work either way in those instances to be prepared for i think it doesn't change anything so the way i look at this is like ceasefire is a point on the timeline the timeline's continuing right so

before ceasefire after ceasefire PCRF was doing work and we just continue that work now if ceasefire holds and we're able to get the people and the resources in that's going to make the relief work easier to take care of if that makes sense so realistically before the ceasefire it was hard to get things in it was hard to get resources in it was hard to buy locally it was hard to do all these things. It was hard to rebuild, but the Palestinians just find a way to do it. And that's the beautiful thing about the Palestinians. They just figure it out. If they don't have the resources, they'll MacGyve or something, and it'll be put together. Right. And they'll laugh through it. Like, I'm watching videos from Gaza of people still having weddings. I'm watching, like, there's,

there's videos of these guys getting ready for their weddings and then going on a honeymoon in the next row of tents. And my mom was like, you can't even get married and you got these guys living in Gaza, and they're over here getting roasted by my mom using like razza as like the benchmark which again like we we just like to live and my mom is a very sweet lady who wants to roast me so it's fine but again I say that in the sense that like we laugh through it we work through it it's very very stressful it's it's not normal let me put it this way in a quick story of why it's not normal so we were in Chicago for the Chicago Marathon we're there with Jenna Jenna's 15. While we're there, we're thinking through all this. We're like, we're jumping around

in the streets, enjoying our time. And then it hits us why we're jumping around the streets enjoying our time because we want to raise money and raise awareness from Palestine. Number one thing that's not normal, right? Like, we're literally raising money for kids who are amputees, but we're over here dancing and laughing and singing and we're like flexing between the two. A couple hours later, the news came out about the journalist Salahadja Farawi. He was killed. He was one of the most well-known journalist that was in everybody's face, like a smiley guy, just cheering people up and singing songs and trying to keep people upbeat and happy. And he was one of the ones in the one of the videos I used to share all the time of, um, Sulfanapkohana, which means

we're going to stay here. So he continued to post things like that that to cheer people up around him. He continued to report. And then on Sunday, news came out that he was killed in Rheza. The second Jenna, the 15-year-old, saw that news. she broke down crying because again she's 15 and she's hearing the gaza stories the same way we're hearing them through the social media through the faces that we've gotten to know right like a lot of people have you know have you know died in gaza over the last two years but it's the faces that you continuously see that it hits different right like there's certain names there's certain faces like man this was a constant part of my life for two years and now this happened so she's

here with her aunt and her aunt looked at me she goes hey can you go cheer her up so then I'm going to sit next to Jenna. She's crying on the curb and just doesn't want to talk to anybody. And now I'm over here cheering up a 15-year-old who's there with an amputated hand, who's crying about a journalist who died in Gaza. And now I'm trying to cheer her up using jokes about, again, she was like, yeah, the day of your wedding, I'm going to be sitting on the stage with you and your wife and joking around about my wedding in the future eventually. So, like, this is not normal, right? Like, it's not normal for a 15-year-old to see that, start crying. We try to cheer her up, but in the back of our minds, we know this is still happening,

and we know that that just happened, but we're trying to, like, give these kids a normal life. So no part of this is normal. No part of this is something we've prepared for as a volunteer. And I'm sure the staff would say the same way. Like, this is different. This is uncharted territories, unprecedented waters, whatever we want to call it. So to answer your question really directly, Amanda, the ceasefire is welcome. It's great.

It's awesome. but everything is continuing the way it was so if we have more access obviously the organization will get more in if we're able to get more people in we'll get them we'll get more people in but just like before ceasefire we were working through it and doing our best and trying to live our lives we are going to continue trying to live our lives teaching life enjoying our time joking laughing dancing singing all with the background in our mind that we know what's happening is still happening and all while we know too that ceasefire and Gaza doesn't mean that this is the end of it all anyways. So we all have to stay involved.

We all have to stay focused and motivated because there are kids in the West Bank too that also need help. There's kids all over Palestine, all over the world. So again, I know we're talking about Gaza right now because it is the most important thing that we're working on. But at the end of the day, we can't forget the rest of the Palestinian kids or the kids all over, right? Like every kid deserves to have a life, deserves to have treatment, access to care, access to school access to a regular child's life that the ceasefire then will hopefully start paving the way for that. But whether it does or not, we as Palestinians are going to continue forging our way to do

that, if that makes sense. Well, I can test to our own experience with that because our nonprofit, together, rising has been involved with PCRF since 2021. a hundred thousand dollar grant in in 2021 and then a $50,000 grant in July 2023 and it was during 2021 when

there was Israel had a bombardment of the West Bank and there were 67 Palestinian kids killed in that and so many maimed and it was active bombardment but PCRF was going in during that period

with the funds and helping these kids so I know that they make a way when there is not a way. And God willing, the ceasefire will hold. And if it does not, I know y'all will be there regardless. And as an organization that has over 20 years provided funds to get the communities of help they need, I know that it is extremely hard to get into Palestine because it's an occupied territory. But also, also, it's always hard. It's always hard to get funds into places where they're needed, especially when they're controlled by other places. And I have never, in 20 years,

heard such a bombardment of kind of a talking point of don't do it because it won't matter. Don't do it, doesn't matter. Don't do it, it won't matter. They can't get it. They can't get it. It's not entirely true, and I'm suspicious of it because it feels, like it feels to me like a talking point from another side that is meant to create apathy or hopelessness so that people who usually show up for places where it's hard to find a way to do not show up. Just wanted to say that. Go ahead. Locker. You're 100% right. Okay. It's the scariest thing somebody can say is I can't like what can I do? that would be enough or I can't do enough to make a difference or what is this going to

help at the end of the day every little bit matters to be honest because whether somebody has $5 or $500 whether somebody has time to speak or can only do silent prayer at the end of the day it all matters because ultimately we're trying to increase our range so raising money is awesome I love raising awareness because here's the unfortunate thing. PCR after raised money, raised a lot of money over the years, but the spikes in money come when Rezaa is getting bombed, right? And we joke around like, man, we're really good at fundraising,

but also Reza kind of does it for us, right? 2021, Reza was getting hit, you know, donations increased. Obviously, the last two years, as people have learned about what's going on, people are looking for reputable organizations to support, donations have increased. the biggest thing that I worry about is what happens tomorrow. Yeah. Right.

I worry about, you know, ceasefire. The only thing I worry about ceasefire is people to see, oh, ceasefire, we did our part. We're all done. Right. Right. Right. When realistically, ceasefire, like I said in the beginning, is the beginning. Yeah.

Right. At the end of the day, if somebody gives $5, now they're involved with PCRF, for example, and they are going to be getting a newsletter of ongoing projects that are happening in the future. If they've been to a different event, I mean, I did an event last year for a group that was raising money for girls scholarships in Palestine to stay in Palestine. So we were raising money to keep these girls educated and then working in Palestinian cities, Palestinian towns to make sure that we're continuing to elevate the level of education, to elevate the level of professionalism in Palestine as well. Palestine is already one of the highest per capita that one of the highest per capita educated. populations in the world. And we want to keep that going. So even with the bombardment of Reza, these kids are still going to school, right? Even with the West Bank, you know, restrictions and

movement checkpoints, people are still finding a way to go to college. People are finding a way to go to school. So we want to make sure that their work is not in vain or their lifestyle is not in vain, which is why I spent all my time talking about this. And it's again, eventually I'll be able to just talk about dancing and singing and music and food. But until then, we're going to keep Palestine on the top of people's minds so that ceasefire does not become the end because we want to continue this effort, we want to continue this energy, want to continue this trend that we don't become just a passing trend. Palestine does affect all of us. Whether people know it or not, whether it's through our tax dollars or not, like Palestine does affect all of us.

People want to help the kids. People want to help the adults. People want to help culturally, economically, politically, there's so many ways for people to get involved. Again, I'm here to talk about my involvement humanitarian-wise, but there's always something for somebody. So again, I never want somebody to say, whatever I do is not going to be enough because that one person might tell one person at dinner that they supported the PCRF and that person might tell the next person, it becomes the domino effect that we've been working on for the last 25 years because before it was Palestinians in a vacuum with just a couple people here and there. Now, I'm over here in the streets of Chicago,

high-fiving strangers, and people are coming up asking me to take a picture because I had a big flag with me. Like, hey, can I take a picture with you? Like, I was a celebrity, right? I called Abby Wan back here. I'm over here. The flag and people are coming like, hey, can't take a picture with you? And I got friends telling me, hey, I saw your picture on some random Instagram page.

I'm just full with a six-by-four flag walking on the streets of Chicago that I put on a big shower rod that I could walk around with. Because again, I want that to be, you know, my legacy when it comes to the Palestinian causes. I want that to be something that doesn't die with me, that we then get the next generation involved, the 18-year-olds, the kids that are in college right now who are going to take this forward. Because eventually the people who still agree with the opposite side or still agree with, you know, what's happening to the Palestinians, over time, you can't hide what's happening. So people are all starting to wake up and that's what we're here for.

That's right. So what do we do, as after everyone follows you on Instagram and we'll leave all this information for people to find the organization and start learning and learning and learning. In the meantime today, we are going to show up financially for the children who are wounded now and have no surviving family. Tell us a little bit, speak directly to the pod squad about what their funds that they give. we actually this particular community you're speaking to right now a couple of months ago we had um dr thayer amad on our podcast he spoke about the needs for the healers the doctors and nurses um in Palestine and the pod squad showed up in such a big way i think they raised 383 right so this is a community that moves we have shown

shown up for the Palestinian healers. Today, we are showing up for the Palestinian children, the ones who are wounded and have no surviving family. What can the pod squad do? What can they give and what will, where can they give and what will the money do? We have, you know, the Gaza Orphan Sponsorship Program that I was mentioning kind of in passing through the different points, but kind of to be very specific and clear about it, we support these communities that have orphans there. So the wounded child, no surviving family, or just children who are in these communities, we want to provide funds to these communities to help support these children with medical needs that they need, with nutrition that they need. We have infant support that we provide

as well, eyeglasses for kids that need eyeglasses, and really the mental health support too. So this money that we raise for the orphan sponsorship program is directly so that our staff can shop locally and keep providing things for our communities. It also helps provide for our staff, it's very directly, you know, focus on the project for these orphaned kids in Raza, which is a community that we really don't want to forget and we don't want them to get lost or passed over and not have this life as a kid that I grew up with. So that is the way we can help today is we'll have a link. We'll have a link specifically for this podcast so we can see how much this community is able to come together. And realistically, we just want to help these

kids as much as we can. And then over time, little by little, whether it's the $5 or the $50, it all adds up. It all means something. I also encourage everybody to check out at the PCRF on Instagram, PCRF.net on online. We have all of our projects online. We like to make sure that we are transparent. We provide our operational reports, our annual reports, where the money is going. So after this podcast, if you want to continue supporting PCRF, we want to learn more about it, we have so much going on, which is a blessing and a curse, right? Because we have so much going on because it's needed, but the curse is that it's needed. So eventually we want to continue providing this help for these kids that truly need it because it doesn't end just the ceasefire.

It doesn't end tomorrow when everything falls. We have to continue supporting these kids through mental health work, through doctors that we can hopefully get in here in the future, through the hospitals that we're going to try to renovate and rebuild, and then expand it throughout the West Bank and beyond. And I just want to say this one thing because this is something that our family has decided to do that we are trying to utilize things that are Palestinian made and exports of Palestine in our daily life. So all of the olive oil we eat now in our family is Palestinian olive oil. And if you've not tasted, Palestinian olive oil, you need to go to the store right now. And so what are some other ideas like that that are like Palestinian exports

that people can kind of input into their daily life, things that we're already using that we can just support the Palestinian community around. Sure. I mean, number one, I love that you love the olive oil. So good. Let me tell you this. My mom's not coming back from Palestine

until the end of November because my grandfather won't leave his home until all the olives are off the tree. Because we have our own olive trees too, so he makes olive oil and he won't leave before the last olive is down. So this is a, it is a deep rooted piece of Palestinian culture is the olive trees it's the olive oil we use the

olive tree as a symbol of Palestinian people because they're so rooted in the ground oh damn so good one of the rules my grandfather has is we don't sell land like that's that's how valuable it is my grandfather is 82 years old he's a little tired he's he's older but when he's talking about land that guy all of a sudden is up straight. He's got a loud voice like, man, where did this come from? Like, what is happening? You were just asleep a second ago. But no, when it comes to the land, when it comes to the olive trees,

that is the most important thing for us because it is our connection to the land. And that's why it's so frustrating when we see online these olive trees getting burned or uprooted because a Palestinian would never uproot olive trees because that is a source of our economy. It's a source of our culture. It is truly a symbol of our deep-rooted place on the land. So I had to say that because you brought the olive oil and we have, I'm part of a DEPCA group, a Palestinian dance group called Zaytuna, which Zaytuna means olive tree. Like it says Zetuna is an olive and we call like Shadjad Zetuna like the olive tree.

So we are rooted, we are teaching the roots for these kids. So it is a very big symbol of our Palestinian culture. So thank you for letting me rant about olives for a second. But otherwise, honestly, the best way to support, you know, different Palestinian exports and things is to follow and elevate Palestinian voices, right? Like my friend Jinan Matari, she wrote this book, everything grows in Jidda's Garden. It's a children's book. It's an awesome book.

It's supporting a Palestinian author, a Palestinian creator, and helping us get our voices out to the world. So everything grows in Jidda's Garden means everything grows in Grandfather's Garden in Arabic. So she wrote this book, right? We have different clothing companies, merch companies. we want to support these Palestinian businesses. If you're in certain towns and areas, we go into these Palestinian pockets, right? Like Chicago has Bridgeville, Illinois, we go support Palestinian businesses. When you want to go eat, you know, go find a Palestinian-owned restaurant.

And if you ever need recommendations or, you know, if your community is looking for recommendations for restaurants in different communities, we can provide those, right? So we want to make sure that we are letting these businesses stay in business because we want to support the people who are willing to speak up and lead from the front as a business too, right? There's been, there's been a lot of businesses who have got a lot of heat over the last couple of years or speaking out or posting on social media about things, Palestinian and non-Palestinian who just want to speak up and be a part of the change. So we want to make sure we support those businesses. When you do buy from a Palestinian business, leave them a good review, right? If it's not a great service, don't leave a bad

review, just don't leave a review at all. But realistically, right, like I try to help, you know, our friends' businesses, our family's businesses, so we can continue to elevate these voices because for a long, long time, and I'll say it like this, when my father came to America, they were all heads down, let's provide for our family, let's learn this language, let's learn this culture. They didn't know what they were doing. My mom was 19, 20 years old. She was a first time mom with me. She was figuring it out as she'd go. My mom was feeding me shrimp and I was getting sick and didn't realize it might be an allergy to shrimp. And I worked my way through it. She's like,

well, you survived, didn't you? Like that was, they figured it out back in the early 90s now as we've gone past like my parents generation who laid the groundwork for us built the foundation helped us go to school helped us open businesses helped us be successful whether it's corporate america whether it's their own businesses now that we have the foundation now it's on us to help take it to the next level so now again my dad's generation was i'm going to grind it out i'm going to do whatever i can for my family to have a good life because we can get an education and opportunity here that we couldn't back there at the Now that I don't take that for granted, now I want to make sure that we're elevating these other businesses, these other voices, creators, musicians, restaurants, groceries, whatever it is to make sure that the next generation continues to hear about Palestine because I came knowing the language. I went to school here. I got to start up a step ahead before my dad. So now it would be a real waste if I did not take advantage of that opportunity.

Beautiful. Well, for today, I'm going to ask you actually to send me a few links of Palestinian businesses that people all over the country might be able to access so that we can get that out to people. And for today, Pod Squad, if you would like to support the communities who are supporting these babies who have lost their health and their homes and their families, if you would like to argue with the alleged claim that these kids have no surviving family if you would like to suggest that you in fact might be part of their surviving family if you do believe that there's no such thing as other people's children which would mean that the Palestinian children are in fact our children and you

would like to support them please give at the link that we will provide to you every penny of that will go to PCRF Abby and I will be matching up to 100,000 of that personally i probably should have run that by abby first is that fun yeah um so go go go let us prove together what we always have which is that we belong to each other that we can do hard things and that the only thing we cannot do is believe that there is nothing that we can do we do what we can do and we can do this today Akram we just love you most importantly can you send me that shirt Yes. Okay.

Most importantly. I love that shirt. I also just want to say when we say the link provided, we will put it everywhere. If you are listening to this on audio, we will put it in the show notes below. So just look in the description. The link will be there. If you're watching on YouTube, the link will be on YouTube. Or the link will be on, or I should say, and the link will be on each of our social platforms.

so you can find it any of those places. Can I just say one thing real quick? You can say whatever you want forever. Okay. So number one, y'all are amazing. Thank you for being such amazing people. Thank you for being so generous. Thank you just for having me on today because number one, I love talking to you,

and y'all are way too generous and way too nice, and I'm glad there are people who care. So I really do appreciate that, and I appreciate your community. But one thing I want to leave with is something that we talked about when we were at your house, that I want to make sure your community knows too. Everything is tough right now. I know it seems really dark. I know we talked about these really heavy topics today. Wounded Child and No Surviving Family is not a normal phrase to say,

going back and forth between living your life and going to see what's on Instagram is not normal. But at the end of the day, if you're feeling down, don't let that swallow you up, still go to brunch. We talked about this together. Glennon was like, like going to brunch. doesn't feel right right now at the end of the day i still need everybody to go do that thing that they love right you know like for me it's like the palisinian community is is my fun stuff it's it's fun for me i love teaching the dance the culture the food and all that i also coach athletes on the side right like

that for me is fun that for me keeps me going it doesn't feel right sometimes like how am i coaching a 16 year old who's trying to play soccer at you know some d1 school but also in my phone i have you know i'm seeing what's happening in palestine but at the end of the the day, if I let myself get swallowed up by the dark stuff, then I can't help out the way that I know I need to help out. I know my contribution. I'm not a doctor. I don't have a ton of money. My contribution is I can tell stories and I go to Palestine and I come back with more stories, right? So I want everybody to be able to do their thing. If their thing is go to brunch, if their thing is to go to the beach, if the thing is they hang out with their dog, with their family, with their kids,

with their friends, don't let the heavy stuff take you away from doing the stuff that you love, because then you'll just stay in this dark corner by yourself and that's not good for for yourself, number one, but then you're not as helpful for the causes that we're trying to help out too. Because again, like this is a marathon. I've had people tell me over the last two years, like, man, this is taking a long time.

You know, like we've been protesting. We've been raising money. What's going on? Like, is this not over? I'm like, man, we've been in this a long time. It didn't start yesterday. So it's not going to end tomorrow. What it's going to take is all of us collectively continuing to raise each other up,

help each other out, back each other up, and really take the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian message to the world. And that only happens if everybody has that thing in their life that helps them do that. So if that thing is brunch, go to brunch. So Glennon, as a Palestinian, I'm telling you, please go to brunch and enjoy your brunch. I love it. Okay, but I will be bringing my olive oil. Yes. Great. We are such a people that love our olive oil. Again, House of Palestine down here in San Diego. we bring it straight from Palestine so that's the one that i brought to your house like literally we know the olive trees that it came from so we we love our olives we love our land we just love sharing it with everybody so hopefully i can keep sharing it with you all too okay pod squad go to the link let us

show up for each other thank you so much akram you are so wonderful thank you for this time thank you for the work that you do in the world and thank you for being our friend and pod squad we will see you next time bye We Can Do Hard Things is an independent production podcast brought to you by Treat Media. Treat Media makes art for humans who want to stay human. And you can follow us at We Can Do Hard Things on Instagram and at We Can Do Hard Things show on TikTok.