Gazan Aid Workers Continue Relief Work Remotely from Tampere as Children Adapt to Finland

Shady and Hanan Shurrab fled Gaza in June 2025 with their three children and have spent a year in Tampere while continuing humanitarian and academic work remotely, YLE reports.

They left most of their belongings behind, crossing from Deir al-Balah via a UNICEF office and the Abu Salim crossing before reaching Israel-held territory. Hanan remembers embassy staff in Tel Aviv offering fruit and juice and the shock of seeing life in Amman carry on almost normally after months of shortages.

In Gaza, Shady worked in emergency coordination support for Doctors Without Borders, and Hanan was dean of the Faculty of Media and Communications at a Palestinian university. Both have kept working from Finland: Hanan is a Scholars at Risk visiting researcher at the University of Tampere and teaches Palestinian students over Zoom, while Shady supports field staff and joins meetings remotely.

They say remote work helps them be useful and cope with guilt about those left behind, even as memories of evacuations, food shortages and the destruction of Rafah in May 2025 remain vivid. Their children are adapting – learning Finnish, making friends and delighting in snow, but they still ask when they will return to a home that may no longer exist.

YLE is partnering with Doctors Without Borders for a live fundraising broadcast, Apua ilman Rajoja, on November 7, 2026 to support relief work in crisis areas.