From Google to Gaza: making online learning accessible
Rhonda Jarrar, a Palestinian-American working for Google in the Bay Area, shares that her work centers around the intersection of tech and diversity, equity, and inclusion. Inside and outside of the office, she’s committed to ensuring people from marginalized backgrounds have access to the tools and opportunities they need to thrive.
When the Gaza 5K made its way back to the Bay Area in 2016, Rhonda reached out to fellow colleagues and asked them to create teams that raised funds for Palestine refugee children in the Gaza Strip in need of mental health counseling and services. Every year since, she’s sent her Gazooglers' team fundraising page for the San Francisco Gaza 5K out across the company. With each year comes new conversations about Palestine and refugees that are sparked with Google colleagues she otherwise would not have met.
Team Gazooglers at the Gaza 5K
She’s also worked with UNRWA USA on the annual Google x Gather for Gaza (previously Iftar for Gaza) event, raising funds to support refugee families in Gaza and provide quarterly food baskets through UNRWA’s food assistance program.
Her inspiration comes from being Palestinian and knowing of her family’s journey from Haifa to Jenin as refugees themselves. These experiences shape her understanding of the often misunderstood narratives that exist in the United States about Palestine refugees. Her goal is to support the cause and Palestinians in any way possible.
Rhonda and UNRWA USA staff at a Google office in San Francisco
The changes to our world brought by the COVID-19 pandemic have brought this cause even closer to her. With so much of our lives going online, Rhonda has found new ways to apply her expertise to help Palestine refugees. The Gather for Gaza initiative has adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic and shifted from raising funds for food assistance to fundraising for visually impaired children in Gaza to have tablets for remote learning. With UNRWA schools in Gaza now online to keep communities safe from the virus, multiple children are often forced to share one parent’s phone as they try to keep up with online lessons. Those phones are simply not designed to meet the needs of visually impaired children. With her own small child at home, Rhonda was inspired to raise funds to provide tablets to help those children in Gaza continue learning online.
Regardless of where one lives and the status they hold, we’ve all had to adapt. Rhonda shares that she wishes people knew that Palestine refugees were just like you and I, just like our families, just like our neighbors -- that they’re people who are trying to provide for their children and families during an incredibly trying year.
If there’s one thing Rhonda urges UNRWA USA supporters to do in the final days of the year, it’s to create a fundraising page through Gather for Gaza, share it with friends and family, and help unlock the potential of children living under blockade.
Together, we can write a more promising ending for Palestine refugees in 2020.