SPECIAL HOLIDAY ART EXHIBITION FUNDRAISER
GAZA CHILDREN VILLAGE
featuring 50 digital prints of drawings made by orphaned children in Gaza
EXHIBITION DATES:
Saturday, 6. December • Sunday 7. December
12 Noon – 3pm (12-15h)
Also viewable at the gallery by appointment throughout the entire month of December.
The CHILDREN’S VILLAGE IN GAZA is a unique humanitarian initiative – a home and school for children who have lost their families in the wars. It offers not only education, daily hot meanls, healthcare, and psychotherapy, but also emotional support, creative expression and a sense of community and belonging. Within its walls, the children grow up together as one large family, surrounded by care, stability, and opportunities to rebuild trust and hope.
As part of their healing and education process, the children of the Village are taking part in an ongoing art program. Through painting and drawing, they are invited to express their dreams, longings, and secret wishes, images that reveal both their pain and their extraordinary imagination.
In parallel, children from schools around the world have responded by creating their own drawings for the children of Gaza, simple gestures of connection through color, imagination, and empathy. These exchanges have become small bridges of empathy, reminding us that art can speak across borders when words and politics cannot.
In support of the efforts of GAZA CHILDREN VILLAGE (GCV), GALLERI SCHAEFFERS GATE 5 will be hosting a special holiday fundraising art exhibition of digital prints of drawings made by 50 children in their care. These prints will be available in exchange for a minimum donation of 50-100 NOK each, all of the money which will go directly to GCV.
DONATIONS to GCV may also be made directly at https://www.thegazachildrenvillage.org/donate
ABOUT GCV
GCV is on the ground with trusted local teams, offering schooling, meals, and lifesaving pediatric care to children who cannot wait.
The Gaza Children’s Village was not created in a boardroom or during a strategic planning session. It was born in the hallways of Gaza’s collapsing hospitals, in the shadows of tents filled with families who had nowhere left to go, and in the hands of a surgeon who held children with no one left to claim them.
In December 2023, Dr. David Hasan crossed the Rafah border into Gaza during one of the most devastating periods the region had ever seen. He left behind a life of comfort, a career at Duke University, and his wife and seven-year-old daughter in North Carolina to serve where medical help had all but disappeared. He expected to operate. He expected suffering. But he was not prepared for the human stories that would alter the course of his life.
He wrote in his diary after one morning in the operating theatre: “Had to pronounce a toddler dead. No one was with him… I named him like he was my own son, Jacob. Then I held him and wept for him.”
He watched local nurses show up every day even when they did not know if their own families were still alive. He saw medical teams amputating children without sedation because no anesthesia remained. He saw mothers standing in destroyed streets begging for water. He saw thousands of displaced people sleeping in hospital hallways, whispering goodnight to one another because they did not know if morning would come.
The suffering became impossible to carry without doing more.
When he finally left Gaza, he wrote his “soul, spirit, and heart stayed behind.” In the weeks that followed, he could not let go of the faces he had seen. He realized something painfully simple: if help did not come fast, thousands of these children would face not only the trauma of war, but the trauma of growing up unseen.
And so, in April 2025, the Gaza Children’s Village was founded, not as an abstract organization, but as a promise born from a doctor’s witness.
What began with six hundred children soon expanded. In August, the Deir al Balah campus officially opened its full program. In October, the Khan Younis Academy of Hope opened and welcomed fifteen hundred children on its first day. Construction began soon afterward on the Zawaidah Academy, which will open by the end of the year and serve another fifteen hundred children.
Today the organisation provides daily care for more than seven thousand children from the ages of four to fourteen. More than two hundred staff and volunteers support these programs. More than thirty teachers and counselors work across the academies. More than three thousand patients were treated in the clinics during September alone. Hundreds of thousands of meals have been served to children and nearby families.
JOIN GCV
The next step of the project is to expand these connections: we plan to organize online encounters between the children of the Children’s Village and classrooms worldwide, allowing them to meet, talk, and discover one another through art, music, and play.
GCV is now seeking school partners and educators interested in joining this growing global initiative, by sharing drawings, creative projects, and conversations with the children of the Children’s village in Gaza. The initiative is entirely non-political; its goal is to nurture empathy, tolerance, and human connection through creativity and imagination.
GCV is also looking for art galleries, cultural institutions, and exhibition spaces to help present the children’s artwork, giving visibility to their voices and dreams. The exhibition can take the form of a digital exhibition, a pop-up event, or a charity auction supporting the Children’s Village.
At GCV’s disposal are over 100 original paintings, videos of the children speaking about their work, and the possibility of involving professional artists works to enrich the exhibition’s artistic and human dimension.
If you or your institution would like to collaborate, exhibit the artworks, or join as an educational partner, please contact:
■ tamaricapari@gmail.com
■ http://www.thechildrensvillagegaza.org
■ https://www.facebook.com/gcvacademyofhope
■ Facebook event
Schaeffers Gate 5 