Each month we share our Second Sunday offering plate with an outside organization, joining in solidarity and compassion with people not only here in our city, but sometimes across the world. As part of preparing for Youth Sunday, members of the youth group vote to decide what efforts they want to support, often supporting organizations focused on youth. This year, they wanted to support Palestinians in Gaza who have been displaced or lost loved ones from the bombing that has followed the Oct 7th attack by Hamas on Israel. In the months since, it is estimated that some 80% of people in Gaza have been internally displaced and some 28,000 people have been killed.

Our Second Sunday plate in February will go in support of an organization that started in a refugee camp in Gaza in 2005 called Youth Without Borders. Presenting this plate via video is Alison Avigayil Ramer, a Jewish activist local to Seattle who has spent much of the past 15 years in Israel and Palestine supporting Palestinian liberation and peace work. She recently returned to the US and started the Social Change Sanctuary (https://alisoncarmel.notion.site/Social-Change-Sanctuary-c1f5c56349ca4331a067a012ea255c00). She is still in contact with the youth leaders in Gaza and shared that they plan to start a soup kitchen with the first funds received. 

Watch her video here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18piVh-gs1qYTe3FTtC7zuJrHJuWA6WdA/view?usp=drivesdk

You might imagine that it takes at least several steps to share funds with people in Gaza right now. The church will be giving the collected funds to HAPPI, the fiscal sponsor of Social Change Sanctuary, which will then funnel those funds to the leaders of Youth Without Borders in Gaza.