Children’s Villages has been working in Gaza for more than 50 years. Like other Spanish NGOs in the Strip, this allows them be very quick in a first response. “We contact all those participants in our programs to see what state each of them is in at minute one,” explains Mónica Revilla, director of the SOS Children’s Villages Spanish Emergency Committee.

All NGOs They also work with local staff and they are precisely the ones in charge of preparing this first list of needs. In this sense, Pilar Orduña García, from Oxfam Intermón, points out that “they themselves are the ones who are experiencing these precariousness firsthand.”

At this point is where the Emergency Fund comes in, a remainder that all NGOs have reserved, and which includes basic material to survive: “Is about water purification tablets, material for shelter, food…; “We have to see which is the closest warehouse where this material is,” says Eloísa Molina, World Vision spokesperson.

Furthermore, also cash is necessary “to buy supplies in times of war,” as Mónica Revilla points out, who says that they “send money to the workers who are there.” However, this, they warn, is only a first response.

There have already been 14 days of intense bombing and forced displacement within the Strip, so the scenario that NGOs expect to find themselves inside is terrifying, and making a detailed assessment is impossible until the ceasefire. At the moment, Children’s Villages has already made a first medium/long-term plan and the figures are dizzying: “From now until August 2027, seven million euros are needed“, as Mónica Revilla highlights. And this is only to cover the basic needs of 22,000 people in Gaza, where there are more than two million.