Ms Rachel. is doing it. Mark Ruffalo is on board. Rosie O’Donnell, Cynthia Nixon, Nicola Coughlan and Mychal Threets are all doing it too. There’s a wave of people immediately posting photos with the hashtag #HalfHeartsForGaza – so, what is it exactly and how can you get involved too?
Started by children’s entertainer and advocate – oh, and totally our favourite human – Ms. Rachel in collaboration with the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), the immediately-viral social media challenge is all about spreading online love and taking meaningful action for the people of Palestine who are experiencing a genocide, and starvation, by Israel.
Explaining the challenge on Instagram, Ms. Rachel said, “Why? Because we see the children and people of Gaza and want to show them we are here. Because our hearts are more complete when we help others. Because we’re all connected. Because it breaks our hearts what is happening. Because we are better together.”
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In a separate post on the PCRF’s page, Ms. Rachel explained the idea came to her after seeing two young girls from Gaza making the shape with their hands: 11-year-old Renad Atallah who has been documenting life in Gaza on social media and raising funds for Human International Canada to help provide food to locals when safe humanitarian access is permitted. She’s gained a following of over 1.4 million over the last two years. And 3-year-old Rahaf who lost both her legs in an Israeli air strike and, with the help of PCRF, was flown to the USA for medical treatment. Ms. Rachel recently made a video singing and dancing with Rahaf wearing her new prosthetic legs.
As mentioned above, a bunch of celebs are supporting the challenge and most recently, Bernice King, lawyer, human rights advocate and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr., posted a pic too:
She captioned it, “For the sake of our children. For the sake of ‘Never Again’ being an assertion that we will not allow any people group, religious group, or ethnicity to be dehumanised and decimated.”
So how can you get involved with #HalfHeartsForGaza? It’s easy! Just follow four simple steps:
- Post a pic of yourself making a half heart shape with one hand;
- Donate to the PCRF, even $1 counts
- Call your senator or congressman (or both!)
- and nominate others to do the same.
(And ok, technically there’s a fifth step, which is adding the hashtag #HalfHeartsForGaza to your post.)
That’s it!
Ms. Rachel has been consistently using her platform to speak up not only for the basic human rights of Palestinian children, but all children around the world. Earlier this year, she met with the family member of Israeli hostages and said, “If you sat with this family member and listened – if you thought of your own precious family – there’s no way you wouldn’t feel absolute anguish and wish for nohing more than this family to be whole again. I pray every day for the release of the hostages.”
(Feature Image Credits: Instagram)
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