My Journey to Finding Anera Has Spanned Decades
by Jennifer Hart
Posted in:Â peopleofanera
I was born in New Haven, Connecticut, where most of my family is from. My mother grew up in a predominantly Muslim community where I ended up working years later, teaching children and adults through special education.
I’ve been aware of the situation in Palestine and Lebanon since the 1990s. I had seen the conflicts in the Middle East before in the news, but wasn’t fully educated on the details. In a college sociology class I was assigned a research paper on current events, and I knew it was a good opportunity to learn about what was actually going on there. I couldn’t believe what I discovered — it was a blatantly unjust situation. But I didn’t see a way to engage further with the topic at the time.
Post-college, I went into human services to work with adults with special needs. In recent years, I’ve gone back to working more in schools. In one of the schools where I worked most recently, the student body is very diverse — probably a third of the students come from Arab nations, particularly Egypt and Syria.
So I’ve been studying Arabic. I love learning languages and talking to people and I was drawn to Arabic by the beautiful script.
When the current war began in 2023, I couldn’t look away. I’m not really a person that gets involved with issues overseas — but this just really struck me. It brought back what I had learned researching the situation decades before. I got on social media to follow what was happening more closely and get different perspectives. At first, I wasn’t taking a position — until I saw the pictures, and realized that a lot of these casualties were kids. I started paying more and more attention. It is really mind-boggling that all this can play out in public, with all this evidence of what’s happening, and there’s nothing we can do about it.
I’ve never seen a war like this before in my lifetime. I felt compelled to act. I wouldn’t want to see somebody in Palestine have to suffer a loss just because there wasn’t an extra bottle of water. Serious catastrophes could be prevented by just making sure those basic necessities are there. I did some research into organizations and discovered that Anera works directly in the community.
My Experience With Anera
I don’t have too many material worries at this point in my life, but at one time I did. Most of us take things like having access to water, heating, or a roof over our head for granted. To see what people in Gaza are going through is just unbelievable. It’s frustrating that more can’t be done, but I know that Anera is always pushing to do whatever is possible to help people.
It was important to me, as someone with a background in education, to support women with children in particular. As a teacher I know how tough it can be to care for kids, and I can only imagine how the displacement would affect them. I’ve seen first hand how harmful disruptions to education due to funding cuts and COVID-19 can be. Imagine losing two school years to war. So enabling people to provide whatever structure they can to kids — how could I not support that?
I knew that to make a difference, it was important to work with an ethical organization whose goals aligned with mine. For me, the best choice was definitely Anera. I’ve had nothing but a good experience working with Anera. The disposition of the people of Palestine and Lebanon in the face of adversity has been remarkable. Anera is very resourceful — they can do so much with the money they have. I feel privileged to work with Anera to provide resources to those who need them most.
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