PALESTINE CHILDREN'S RELIEF FUND

PCRF-DC Reaches Out to Needy Children in Palestine
Community sponsors holiday shipment of 200 wheelchairs to besieged Gaza Strip

ARLINGTON -- March 31, 2004 -- Northern Virginia residents came together this holiday season to send cheer halfway across the world with a gift of 200 wheelchairs to needy Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip.

Led by the D.C. Area Chapter of The Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF), nearly 100 residents of Arlington, Alexandria, and Fairfax reached into their hearts this past holiday season to raise $12,000 to purchase 200 wheelchairs for injured and disabled Palestinian children from very poor families. The chairs were shipped in early December to Israel, where they
were met by two American volunteer physical therapists who then traveled with the wheelchairs into Gaza and spent three days fitting the chairs to their new owners.

Steve Sosebee, the American journalist who founded PCRF in 1991, was in Gaza to help with the distribution. Sosebee said, "These chairs will enable hundreds of injured and disabled poor people in Gaza achieve a level of mobility and independence that previously was not available to them, and we are grateful that many people came together to support this humanitarian
endeavor. It proves that people at a local level can make a positive impact worldwide, despite the violence and despair, and that should give us hope for the future."

One local participant in the effort was PCRF-DC chapter co-founder Daniel Quinn, a social worker with Arlington County public schools who spent the last two summers volunteering in Gaza with PCRF. Quinn said that the memory of one particular boy he met motivated him to participate in this local effort: "Qusai is 13 years old and his kneecaps were both shattered by an Israeli army sharpshooter. His parents are so poor that they cannot buy him a wheelchair. With resources such as food and infant formula so scarce in Gaza, and the inability of most families to afford these basic necessities, getting wheelchairs in to help boys like Qusai makes an unforgettable difference in their lives."

Since 1991, communities across the United States have worked through PCRF to raise funds for sending more than 1,500 wheelchairs to injured and disabled Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinian refugees in southern Lebanon and Syria.