Impossible Light for Children

Product Description

United States

Supporters

Our names are Allaa and Tamie—Allaa is from Gaza and Tamie is from America. We are the founders of Impossible Light–a project to care for those who are in the heaviest and darkest places, for whom light and lightness often seem unreachable.

Both of us have a huge heart for children, specifically the children of Gaza who are suffering from the inhumane conditions they are now forced to try to grow up in. For several months now, we have been working to buy and distribute milk formula and diapers to infants and babies in Gaza, and as the cold of winter comes, we are now working on buying and distributing winter clothes for children.

We became dear friends over the last year, and after a while we fell in love! And now we are joyfully partnered in trying to keep people alive (and partnered in life). Tamie grew up partly in Jerusalem, and met Allaa through a friend of a friend. Over the last year, we have worked hard to successfully evacuate dozens of people from Gaza, and once the border closed on May 6, 2024, we started thinking together about how to help the families–and especially the children–still trapped inside of Gaza.

Many mothers of infants and babies in Gaza cannot produce breastmilk because they are malnourished, or infected with diseases caused by the unsanitary conditions, or because they are traumatized and their bodies are shut down. When Allaa heard about this, he started coordinating (by phone) with his closest friend from high school, Mohammed, to figure out if it was possible to find and buy milk formula for infants. It took many hours, many days, many weeks, to figure it out, but together Allaa and Mohammed did figure out how to find the milk formula~and also eventually diapers too.

In time, Mohammed started asking us if we could help with other, basic needs for the people in his “tent neighborhood” (as we call the area of Gaza where they are now living). Could we help with shoes for children whose feet are getting infected becuase they’re barefoot and there is so much shrapnel and unsanitary waste lying around? Could we help with buying vegetables for families that are malnourished? So, we have said yes, and then we have tried to find the money. (That’s where you come in…alllll the money for all these projects come from beloved ones like you.)

It wasincredibly difficult to find basic supplies in Gaza a year ago when we started. Now, it’s catastrophically impossible. That’s why we named our organization impossible light. It’s impossible, and yet we will not give up.

Prices vary wildly because of wartime extortion prices, and because Israel will not let in any food or any anything. Mohammed is working all the time to find good prices. It is incredibly difficult to get money into Gaza in a safe way, but Allaa has figured it out. Even so, there is a 20% markup (commission) on all the money we get into Gaza, paid to the people who help us to transfer it in.

There’s lots more information on our website, along with videos and photos. That’s at impossiblelight.org!

We’ve been finding and buying and giving away for free diapers to babies in human-created hell. These babies might not look like they live in human-created hell, because their parents put on their best clothes and make sure they’re clean–as an act of great dignity, an act of life. Also, we really try in all of our posts and pictures to honored the fullness of humanity of these precious people–not to just be one more place that posts pictures of the maiming and killing and suffering and murder of these humans so that we (the rest of the world) never ever see them alive, shining eyes, and so we come to unconsciously believe that their whole purpose is to suffer, or that somehow their suffering is just expected and ordinary and therefore nothing to be brought to our knees about. When I (Tamie) say “finding and buying and giving away for free diapers” I am talking about a process that takes weeks and is incredibly difficult, and takes great skill, and is done at great risk. Allaa and Mohammed have spent dozens and dozens of hours and energy and intelligence and skill making this happen. It has been so difficult to make it happen–but they, resilient and strong beyond measure, have pulled it off. Here are some of the babies who want to live, and their parents want them to live. May we each do our absolute maximum to push the powers that be to stop killing them. May they live joyful and long lives. Those of you who have donated recently–you did this.

Hi folks,

Mohammed has been working on finding and buying diapers to then give away for free to families who desperately need them. We wanted to give y’all an update on what exactly that looks like on the ground and how it’s going.

First of all, for those of you who don’t have small children, here’s a little primer on diapers:

-Diapers come in lots of different sizes because babies are lots of different sizes. At this point, many babies in Gaza are wearing any diaper of any size since that’s better than nothing.

-There are cloth diapers and plastic diapers. Cloth diapers are old-school (that’s what our great-grandparents used before plastic diapers existed), favored by a lot of environmentally-friendly folks in the West because you can wash and re-use them. The reason that cloth diapers are generally not realistic in Gaza is because there isn’t enough clean water to drink and bathe with, much less wash diapers with (as you can imagine, it takes a lot of water and soap to get a cloth diaper clean again).

-A “pack” of diapers in the West is generally between 20 and 40 diapers. A pack of diapers in Gaza is almost always 40 diapers.

-In the United States, the cost of diapers has been “skyrocketing” since the pandemic started, and I put that in quotes because down below I will explain what the average cost is now in Gaza and we will see the true meaning of the world “skyrocketing.” In 2025, according to Google, the average cost of a package of diapers is $20-$25 in America. The average cost for a package of diapers in 2019 was $16.65.

-Diapers are called nappies by a lot of the English-speaking world. Trucks are also called lorries, and the trunk of one’s car is called a boot, but I digress.

In order to give away diapers for free to families who are too poor to buy them on their own or who don’t have someone in the family who can risk going out onto the streets to try to find them, etc.–in order to give them away for free, we first have to find them and then buy them. Because little to no aid is getting into Gaza right now, the prices are extraordinarily high. Mohammed has to search all around Gaza, both by literally walking around and talking to “vendors” [ordinary people who are selling their own possessions out of the trunk of a car, or just standing on a (destroyed) street corner and selling their own possessions] and by calling on the phone people he knows of who regularly sell things. Because so few diapers are available, he is getting one package from one person, and another package from another person; one box from one person and another box from another person. He’s then storing the diapers hither and thither–in the corner of a friend’s tent, in another corner of another friend’s tent, until he’s gathered enough to redistribute them. This is taking a lot of time since he also has to tend to his very ill wife, and he also has to find food for himself in the most dangerous conditions on Earth (literally). But he is diligently working on it every day.

The price for a pack of diapers in Gaza before October 2023 was $5 (so much cheaper than in America!). The price for a pack of diapers two days ago in Gaza was $60-$73. Mohammed was actually able to get a deal for $53/pack, and he bought a number of packs. But now he isn’t able to find anything lower than $60-$73, and he says that the prices are rising higher by the minute.

Because it’s so convoluted, something that we (Allaa and I) don’t explain to everyone very often is how much money we (Impossible Light) have to pay every time we want to transfer money into Gaza, into Mohammed’s hands so that he can then buy the diapers or food or whatever we are focusing on buying at that time. In order to transfer the money to Gaza, right now at this moment there is a 53% commission/fee. What that means is that most entities charge us 53% every time we want to transfer the money in. What that means is that if we want to send $1000 to Mohammed, we have to pay an additional $530 to transfer the money. So we have to send $1530, in order for Mohammed to get $1000. Allaa is continuously, continuously, like a full-time job continuously looking for lower fees. But in these extreme conditions it is extremely hard to find lower fees. But he does not stop trying, and occasionally he finds a good soul who is willing to move money for us for 25% fee, which is so generous in these conditions, especially when you consider that these good souls also have to try to care for their families in these circumstances.

Mind you, that 53% changes by the day and it even changes by the hour. If there is news that aid will get into Gaza soon, the percentage will drop. If aid is getting in regularly–which it hasn’t for months–it drops wayyyy lower.

Without diapers, babies’ health prospects are dire. They have very high chances of developing skin rashes, urinary tract infections, fungal infections, bacterial infections, and more serious diseases. In a context where there are no functioning hospitals or doctors offices, and no consistent access to food, infections and diseases in babies can kill them. Diapers aren’t some luxury item, you know?

My dears, we are so deeply grateful for you all for holding this whole operation together. More so than we ever can express. May the day come when we can all gather, together with our brothers and sisters in Gaza, and celebrate freedom and peace. For now, we will all keep doing what we can to keep these human beings alive and in enough health that they can come through this hell. By the way, do feel free to send us questions if you have any: [email protected].

Hi, dear friends. We’re writing to announce the launch of our new humanitarian relief project aimed at providing diapers for infants and toddlers in Gaza.

We know that many of you may be immediately wondering why we are focused on providing diapers when all that you see on social media and the news is about the famine, starvation, and extreme lack of food. There are a few answers to that:

· We continue to buy as much food for people as we are able, and we won’t stop doing this. There is very little food to be bought, but we will continue to search for it and get it to the people who need it the very most.

· Diapers might not seem like one of the most important needs, but they actually are. There isn’t enough water for drinking, much less for using to wash cloth diapers or continually wash babies—so disposable diapers are the only viable option. And having a clean and sanitary way to get rid of poop is one of the most critical parts of keeping babies alive and healthy and keeping the people around them alive and healthy. If you think back to your elementary school or high school science classes, or just what your mama taught you, you’ll realize that human excrement anywhere near water supplies, or where people eat, or just around, is an excellent way of making a lot of people very, very sick.

Over the past weeks, we’ve received urgent pleas from hospitals and childcare centers, reporting a severe shortage of diapers. (Obviously; there’s a severe shortage/absence of everything.) Many families are unable to secure this basic necessity, putting the health and dignity of their little ones at serious risk. And the hospitals are asking individuals or organizations to please help them.

After working closely with our supplier, we’ve secured a high-volume, cost-efficient diaper shipment at the best possible price – and most importantly, and frankly miraculously, the supplier won’t be charging us the 45% commission that sellers in Gaza usually take in addition to the cost itself. (So, if they sell you something for $100, they take an additional $45 markup as the cost of doing business with them). That means a much higher percent of your donations will be able to be used for the much-needed supplies themselves.

We are launching this project immediately (as in, we will start bargaining for the diapers today, tonight, tomorrow at the latest (Allaa says, “we start bargaining tonight, not tomorrow!”), given the scale of need and the lack of diaper shipments entering the region for an extended period. We will actually use money that we already have to buy 10 medium packages/boxes of diapers, and we’ll buy as much more as we can, depending on how many donations we get.

This is one of the most urgent, impactful efforts we can support right now. Diapers are more than just a basic item — they are essential for a child’s health, hygiene, comfort…and life.

We need your help. Please donate and share this campaign widely.

Together, we can restore dignity to families and protect the health of the most vulnerable.

Thank you for standing with us.

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