Through an NGO, Americans help thousands of Gazan children
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Roshan Amiri
- . January 11, 2023
- . Update: January 11, 2023 9:30 pm
As the founder of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, an American NGO leader who married a Palestinian and received citizenship has helped hundreds of sick children in the Gaza Strip.
An American guy named Steve Sosebee who wed a Palestinian woman in 2018 was granted a Palestinian passport and identification card. He has intermittently resided in the West Bank ever since.
Sosebee, 67, a Kent, Ohio native, claimed that Palestine “chose” him rather than the other way around. In 1992, he established PCRF, an organisation that supports the medical care of Palestinian children in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
In order to further his studies in international relations at university, Sosebee travelled to Palestine over 30 years ago. He went to the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the time, which was the first Palestinian uprising.
Years later, as a journalist, he went back to Palestine and met Huda Al-Masry, a social worker, in the Jerusalem YMCA. Jenna and Deema, his daughters from his marriage to Al-Masry, were born. Sosebee’s two daughters relocated to Palestine after Al-Masry passed away in 2009 after a fight with cancer.
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Sosebee has aided in the treatment of injured children while working in Palestine, most notably two siblings from Hebron who received free medical care in the US. They were the first children ever to receive free medical care in the US during the intifada, he claimed.
With an annual budget of around $10 million, PCRF has cared for 2,000 sick and injured kids and supported hundreds of international volunteer medical teams that have assisted tens of thousands of young people in regional hospitals who are ill or injured.
In memory of his wife, Sosebee established the first open paediatric cancer centre at Beit Jala Hospital in the West Bank, close to Bethlehem.
Later, the 67-year-old marries Zeean Salman, a paediatric oncologist from the US-Sudan.
An NGO called PCRF, which has six offices in the West Bank and three in the Gaza Strip, depends on private donations.
“Gaza requires aid. The provision of paediatric healthcare is urgently required there. As is the case in the West Bank, the requirements of the populace cannot be met by the private sector, Sosebee said to Arab News.
In addition to Palestinian political differences, the 15-year Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip has resulted in a deteriorating health situation there.
The Gaza Strip is home to more than 2.3 million people and is governed by Hamas since the group won the 2006 elections.
