Friday has arrived again.
And this week, I can’t stop replaying one small moment I saw in Gaza.
Not a tragedy. Not rubble. Not even an explosion.
Just a little girl sitting outside a collapsed doorway,
trying to warm her fingers with her breath.
She wasn’t crying.
She wasn’t calling out.
She was just sitting there, shivering,
rubbing her hands together the same way my own mother used to do for me
when I was cold as a child.
But she had no one to do it for her.
That’s the part that stayed with me.
People talk about Gaza’s orphans as if they’re an idea,
a statistic, a number too big to imagine.
But she wasn’t a number.
She was one child trying to warm her hands
in a winter that does not have mercy.
And this Friday she will wake up cold again.
That’s why Friday Giving means something different this week.
Because for Gaza’s orphans, Friday isn’t routine.
It isn’t comfort.
It isn’t family.
It’s the day they hope someone remembers they exist.
This Friday, your giving can place warmth into the coldest corners of their lives:
A hot meal for a child who hasn’t felt full in days.
A warm jacket for a child whose only protection is rubble.
A thick blanket for a child sleeping where windows once were.
Every act of Friday Giving carries the same message:
“I see you. I haven’t forgotten you.”
And that message matters more in winter
than in any other season.
Winter in Gaza does not wait.
The cold does not negotiate.
And these children,
the ones with no hands to hold theirs cannot survive it alone.
So this Friday, I’m asking you to act.
Not out of duty. Not out of charity.
But because no child should sit in the cold trying to warm their own hands.
Let this be the Friday
a child feels warmth again.
Let this be the Friday
your mercy becomes someone’s survival.
For the little ones who sleep in the cold, waiting for warmth to find them,
Hafsa
