The Edina-Gaza Twinning Association (EGTA) is thrilled to announce the first sales of websites to Gaza. A renowned paediatrician in London has ordered two websites, to be built by Gaza Active Tech, headed by Mohammed and Sameh Almadhoun. Both are very excited at the news, which comes at a great time for the two Palestinian cousins. Whilst Mohammed has a day job teaching at a UNHWRA school, Sameh is always on the lookout for new IT projects, to keep his 7 co-workers busy. His business, Gaza Active Tech (GAT), share premises with the Take My Hand children’s charity, which Mohammed and Sameh volunteer with- and the income from the website sales will help pay the rent for the charity’s classrooms, which are used by GAT when the kids are at school.
[Note neither EGTA nor Pete receive a penny for this work; all financial transactions go directly between the UK client and the Gaza developer, using Western Union cash transfer]
[Take My Hand works with up to 96 children from the Jabaliya Refugee Camp, near Gaza City, who have been orphaned by Israel’s bombs; they offer a range of activities, including weekly English classes, hosted with British volunteers from EGTA on Zoom.].
The website sales came about through relentless legwork by the EGTA* Chair, Pete Gregson. On the day that Edinburgh Council announced that it would, (rather than twin with Gaza), ask Edinburgh Partnership to identify mutually beneficial projects, Pete took delivery of 10,000 flyers like the above one, promoting the idea of getting your website built in Gaza. Pete works at the NHS, but he used his annual leave to tour the UK, delivering flyers for both Gazan websites and his forthcoming Muslim & Jew Tour . He visited 16 of the country’s largest cities, putting out 700 flyers in every one. Whilst focussing on Muslim businesses, he also put some flyers into health centres and pharmacies. Somehow one of them made it onto a Bristol Hospital notice board, and when the London paediatrician told colleagues she was looking for a website, a Palestinian-supporting health worker passed on the www.twingaza.com website link.
The EGTA founder had done the prep, having funded £500 for a pilot website for another volunteer with EGTA, Mike Hauxwell, to get his Teaching English website built in Gaza, this time by top Gazan developer Saleem Summour. The website, www.nellenglish.com, features on the flyer as proof that Gazans make excellent websites, at a fraction of the cost of ones built in the UK. “The Nellenglish website has got us these crucial first sales”, said Pete.
Having the flyer published was only half the battle. Its release was timed to coincide with publicity generated by the Edinburgh Council decision, which was, in itself, the culmination of three year’s campaigning work. The challenge was then to get the flyers distributed. So, starting off in Edinburgh, then winding down through Newcastle, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield, Derby, Leicester, London, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and then back up to Glasgow; he camped in 16 cities, but occasionally stayed with any friend that would have him. After having put out almost 10,000 flyers offering Gazan websites, some three weeks after his return, there had been no registers of interest- and Pete was beginning to despair. But then the email he’d been waiting for arrived, headed “URGENT REQUEST: Website enquiry” arrived and he knew his luck was turning.
The reason that Gaza websites are hot on the market? The illegal Israeli blockade, now in its 15th year, has meant a whole generation of Palestinians have developed skills in the one space that Israel cannot police… CYBERSPACE. The Gazans – a literate and numerate people – the Arabs invented algebra (al-jabr)
after all – have turned to learning software in their droves and the Gaza Strip can now boast a booming IT industry. Because wages are low, websites are cheap. And Gazans speak excellent English! Pete hopes sales might be good because many British people feel enormous sympathy for the oppressed Gazans, knowing that it was the British that have ruined these people’s lives, during its mandate from 2018 to 1948 and whose violence was recently exposed on Newsnight. (Britain of course, has wrecked millions of Palestinian lives by illegally gifting their country to the Zionist federation in 1917, in order to both get the Jews out of the UK and secure Jewish money to finance WW1.)
Pete has used Facebook to reach out to 1,500 Gazans, who are avid users of the social media platform. “Once you have one friend in Gaza, you can easily get more”, says Pete, who gets around 5 friend requests from Gazans each day- and never rejects any of them. It’s how he met Mohammed, who was promoting his children’s charity in order to derive some help with running costs. Pete, who was a community video youth worker for 35 years, immediately saw the value of Mohammed’s work with kids (who had lost their parents and families through Israel’s indiscriminate bombing attacks) (over 10,000 people have been killed in the past 20 years, as a punishment and revenge for the 44 deaths caused by Hamas rockets). The kids have come on leaps and bounds thanks to Mohammed’s care; Pete speaks some Arabic, so enjoys speaking to the children himself when he sets up the weekly Zoom calls.
The two websites will bring at least £1300 into Gaza coffers and Pete hopes it is the first of many commissions; the London doctor has suggested she knows other consultants who may require website services. The doctor said “Thank you Pete for connecting us – Sameh I look forward to working together on this!”
Pete has other Gazan website developers on his books- he hopes that he gets sufficient orders to give lots of Gazans a break. As Pete said “This is the start of something new. It wasn’t my idea- credit should go to Gazan Wisam Wadi who’s moved here to Scotland, currently training to be a teacher. It was Wisam who, three years ago, suggested this could be a great way to get work into Gaza. It’s taken three years to get here, during which I’ve learnt a lot about Gazan IT, largely thanks to information from Gaza Sky Geeks, a Gazan IT training provider, who backed the twinning bid to Edinburgh Council.”
“These two jobs represent five weeks employment for a web developer, with a budget of £1,300- which will go far for their family- remember the average Gazan earns just £10/ day in a café- and only 50% of them have a job. And there is no dole for the 50% who can’t find work. I hope we can get lots of work to people in Gaza this way.”
– ends –
*EGTA are in the process of applying for charitable status
More from Pete Gregson, EGTA Chair, on +44 (0) 758 472 2191
Or from web designer Sameh Almadhoun on +970 592 544 665
More info for prospective purchasers at Your Website- Built in Gaza – Twin Edinburgh with Gaza (twingaza.com)
