Sorry to clog up this subreddit. I've started organizing a fundraiser in addition to helping a family and I find myself having a lot of small questions that could probably easily be answered by those who've been running fundraisers or helping people in Gaza for a long time. Is there anything that exists like that? And if so, could someone DM me to chat?
I've been helping a family in Al-Mawasi financially for the last few months. I've verified the family and the wife and I talk often. She shows me pictures and videos of the kids and their pets multiple times a week. I've been encouraging her to post more on social media but she's not always consistent with it and a lot of her videos don't stand out because there isn't much going on and they're very short.
For the first time today she posted a picture with heavy AI use involved. The kids recently took in a stray cat they've been taking care of in hopes it'll kill mice that get into the tent. She's posted videos and shared videos and pictures of the cat with me, but the picture she posted today was an obviously AI generated (or edited) picture of her two older kids with a kitten that looks nothing like their cat, and in the picture her son is holding a sign that essentially says some variation of "like, share, comment to help us." It's so obvious that even Instagram has flagged it as AI content. It seems a content creator who's been commenting on a lot of their more recent posts (and seems to be someone who uses their own account primarily to share posts from Gazans) helped them create this, or may have created it themselves, because the post has them tagged as a collaborator. AI use has been the kiss of death with a few other campaigns I've been seen in the past, but this one has been getting no donations for the last two months and I know the wife is desperate. I'm not sure if I should say anything to her or if it would be too rude of me to do so and be taken as scolding. Please let me know, if anyone has any insight. I would hate to see her account being written off as "fake" or a scam when I know it isn't one, but to those who have nothing I can only imagine how beneficial generative AI can seem for their cause.
I've shared this in the comments of several posts before, but I see people regularly asking about possible scams or how to know someone is real on here, so I'll share how I verified the family I'm helping.
Photo/video evidence alone isn't enough. If I wanted, I could use a program to rip footage from any instagram or tiktok account, make a burner account, claim the footage as my own and set up a fundraiser or ask for donations via PayPal. Right now there is a tremendous incentive for people all over the world to do this, especially people living in poverty outside Gaza.
If possible, you need to do a video call together. That said, there have been stories about scammers agreeing to this and calling from a dark room, so you need to make sure to do it during the daytime in Gaza, even if this means early morning for you. When I called with my family for the first time, it was around 2am for me and 10am in Gaza.
You need to ask to see inside and outside of the tent or dwelling. There is a good chance that the person you're communicating with may not know English, so you may need to translate messages to Arabic before sending them. You should be able to figure out pretty quickly, like within minutes, whether or not this person is legitimate. I was able to meet both parents and all three children that I'm helping.
Communicate your gender ahead of time so that the women can be covered if that's important to them.
After verifying, try to stay in regular contact with the person or family. There have been instances of scammers trying to make fraudulent fundraisers posing as people who've passed away. When one of my friends who used to be in Gaza (met online before 10/7) was completely without a phone/internet for six months or so in 2024, someone else contacted me pretending to be her and was able to get a few donations from me before I was able to figure out that it wasn't her. Be careful, be thorough, but above all, don't be discouraged. I promise anyone who is in Gaza and really in need of help will be more than happy to do a call with you for verification's sake. I've had two or three people reach out to me on here requesting help in exchange for verification since I started posting in this subreddit, but unfortunately I only have enough to help one family for now.
I have two credit cards (7500 and 850), one personal loan from past debt consolidation from those same cards (14,500), and one car loan (8500). I'm paying roughly 1200/month in debt payments and about $300-400 of that goes to interest. I have three savings accounts with roughly 10k in them. Today I finally snapped.
I set up transfers to move all but 2k (around 8000 in total) of savings to my checking from my various accounts. The funds should arrive next week - my plan is to pay off the 850 card and as much of the 7500 card as possible as the 7500 card has the highest interest rate. I've taken both cards out of my wallet and placed them with a third card I've carried a $0 balance on for over a year. My plan is to pay off the 7500 card as soon as possible. October will be 3 paycheck month, plus I'm getting around 1k back for taxes, so I should be able to have it paid off by November at the latest. Once that's done I will have $400 more per month of breathing room.
At the end of the year I should be getting a profit sharing bonus of anywhere between 6-8k. I plan to put all of that towards the 14.5k loan, which should bring it down to around 4k by that time after my monthly payments through the end of the year. Then, I plan to focus on trying to pay that off ASAP.
When all that's left is my car payment, I will have freed up 1k in funds per month that are no longer going to minimum payments. I plan to try to knock that out in as little time as possible. Then, I should finally be able to enjoy my salary, relax, and not worry so much about money.
I'm extraordinarily privileged to make close to 80 thousand USD per year. Still, it feels like I'm living paycheck to paycheck more than I did when I was making 35k. I'm paying almost as much as I used to net per month in debt payments. I'm going to be 40 in a few years and this insanity needs to stop.
Even though I've done an excellent job at curtailing shopping habits over the last couple of months, I could really be so much better. I need to be better. I need to be debt free and to be building up a solid safety net for myself. I want to no longer have to worry about money.
I've only been making a "good" income for a couple of years. For the vast majority of my adult life I made barely above minimum wage. The most I made before age 30 was $10.50/hour and before 33 was $18/hour; I'm now 37. I never learned solid money management - there was hardly ever any money to manage. Having it means I feel entitled to go on trips, to buy lavish gifts for friends and family, and to indulge myself with all of the things I was deprived of for so long. Even though I'm making more, though, rent prices have shot up. I'm not paying what adults used to pay in rent in the 2000s, when 80k could get you that lavish lifestyle. I've moved twice in 2 years and have come face to face with the material effects of surrounding myself with stuff. I want a comfortable, peaceful life, with everything I need and not much more. I want to enjoy my life, not spend it doing mental inventory of what I have (possessions) and what I need (funds).
I'm sure some of you can relate.
I'm helping a family in Al-Mawasi and am brand new to trying to figure out how to send crypto. If anyone here is sending crypto to families in Gaza and can help me figure this out, I would be deeply grateful. Please send me a DM. I'll delete this post after I've been able to make a successful transfer.
The father of the family I'm helping has a hearing disability caused hearing loss after surviving a bombing. He desperately needs hearing aids to be able to work again. Is there any way of finding out how to obtain hearing aids in Gaza right now?
I know they exist, I'm just not so good at finding them. I live on the northern side of LP near the Fullerton red line stop. I frequent Proper Pizza on Halsted and the Mexican place next to Firefly Burgers. I'm not against shelling out sometimes but it feels like almost everything is $20 and up now, it would be nice to have some cheaper options as well.
Hello, I apologize if this question is ignorant. I've been helping a family in Gaza for the last couple of months. The husband has a hearing disability, thankfully the wife and three children are mostly okay, but today the wife asked me if I knew of any ways for them to go about trying to evacuate. I am down to research this as much as possible and make any of the phone calls I need to make or send any emails I need to send. She said they don't have any family outside of Gaza that they're aware of, and neither of them speaking English makes it difficult to take stock of their options. If someone could even point me in any direction, that would be of the utmost help. I need to know which organizations could potentially help or even guide them through trying to pursue the process. If evacuation is possible I'd even be willing to try to contribute to the cost.
That is all. Black queer men deserve to be an object not only of sexual desire but of romantic and tender yearning for the whole, imperfect people they are.
I'm a white cis lesbian but sometimes seeing the care with which Louis's character and presence in the story is handled just makes me cry. Louis I'm sorry for everything this man did to you and I hope the writers put him through hell for it.
I have no idea why it never occurred to me to just ask here lol. I'll bring wine.
Edit to add: also down to watch with someone who doesn't have a party planned but wants to hang. ✌️
New to Chicago by way of LA (originally from KC) and I'm trying to watch more movies. Historically I'm bad at sitting through them on my own. Interested in seeing "classics" from oldies to current, art films, documentaries, and anything interesting. Looking for a few people to catch the occasional movie with and then get food and a drink after. I'm 37yo, queer (lesbian) and ideally looking for a mixed crowd to do this with. Any recommendations?
For the last couple of months I've been helping to support a family in Gaza by sending them regular payments to their fundraiser. I was the only person doing this and I planned to continue doing it after I was able to verify they were really in Gaza via video call. Their fundraiser was taken down overnight the night before last and the mom is beside herself. She only speaks Arabic and had no idea what to do. We communicate via translator. Apparently she has a friend overseas who speaks Arabic and has been managing the fundraiser for her, but so far she hasn't heard back from this person about getting the account back up and running and is asking me if I know of any other options. I told her that all I could find was that PayPal might work if she has an Israeli phone number. Has anyone else successfully gotten a fundraiser reinstated or assisted someone in doing so? Are there any tips I could give her to try to get this sorted out?
Editing for clarity: the platform was indeed GoFundMe. The fundraiser appears to have been taken down by the website. Still waiting to see if she's heard back from her friend oversees about the campaign. I'm assuming it's impossible to get back up and running. I recently sent a bigger payment than normal for Eid and it's still showing the funds were taken from my bank but I'm not sure if she'll be able to access them or not. I might be able to get them back from GFM and try to send again if she can get her Bank of Palestine account up and running. I'm wary to try to manage a Chuffed campaign for anyone but am recommending she have her friend who helped with the GFM set up a Chuffed fundraiser for her. Fuck this genocide and everything/everyone making it so impossible to help decent people out. I plan to continue helping until long after the genocide stops but I'm just one person in the Midwestern USA who knew nothing about Gaza before 10/7/23 and has no other contacts there now.
Recently transferred out by my job, was living in LA for a year previously (Kansas City before that) and I fell in love with the hojicha einspanner at About Time in Koreatown LA as well as the hojicha ice cream at Matsu Maru in Ktown and Midori Matcha in Little Tokyo. I also miss the matcha warabimochi you could buy at Yama Sushi Marketplace. Does anyone know any specific places in Chicago where I can find these things, if they exist? I know about the existence of Chinatown and places like Mitsuwa, Gangnam Station and H-Mart - what I specifically want to know is if anybody has seen these things for sale or on a menu anywhere, not where they *might* be. Thank you!
Edit: thank you for all the recommendations!!!
I was able to video call someone claiming to be in Gaza and verified they and their family are definitely in Gaza. They initially sent me a message on Tumblr. After our video call they followed me from 3 different accounts. If this person is legitimate, why would they have three separate accounts to post the same fundraiser on? Is there something I'm missing?