How Palestinian-led initiative Sa7ten is fostering Sumood

On a spring afternoon in Paris, Omar Radejko—chef, restaurateur, and founder of the grassroots Palestinian aid organisation Sa7ten—joins a video call, his voice calm but charged with quiet conviction. “It started with a single evacuation,” he recalls. “A family friend trapped in Gaza when the bombing began. We raised money at a dinner. And then another dinner. Then we realized evacuation was not only prohibitively expensive—it was, in many ways, ethically troubling. Why remove people, when they want to live with dignity where they are?”

From this moment of reckoning emerged Sa7ten, an organisation rooted in community, transparency, and Palestinian self-determination. Co-founded in early 2023 by Radejko, 29, who was interviewed with the organisation’s media director Hussein Amri, 34, Sa7ten has become a quiet but powerful force in Gaza’s humanitarian landscape.

Unlike traditional NGOs Sa7ten is built on direct, personal trust with teams embedded in Gaza’s besieged communities. “Our model is entirely based on what people on the ground tell us they need,” Radejko explains. “We don’t impose aid. We respond.”

The urgency of Sa7ten’s work cannot be overstated. According to the World Health Organization, Gaza’s 2.1 million inhabitants are now enduring one of the world’s worst hunger crises. Nearly 500,000 are in a state of “catastrophic” food insecurity. The IPC’s latest assessment warns that 71,000 children under five could be acutely malnourished within a year if the blockade continues.

The humanitarian blockade, in effect since March 2, 2025, has already claimed the lives of at least 57 children due to starvation and related illnesses. And WHO’s Director-General, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is blunt, stating, “We do not need to wait for a declaration of famine to know that people are already starving, sick, and dying.”

For Sa7ten, the answer lies not only in delivering aid, but in delivering it with dignity. “Our approach is very simple,” Amri explains. “Would I accept this kind of aid if I were on the receiving end? If the answer is no, we don’t do it.”

Instead of handing out pre-packed food boxes, Sa7ten distributes food coupons redeemable at local vendors. They fund community kitchens. Clothing is distributed not in bulk, but through systems that allow people to choose what they need. “We support local tailors,” Radejko says. “Even in crisis, people want to feel normal. To wear something they chose, not something handed to them like leftovers.”

This emphasis on dignity is more than cosmetic. It challenges the deeper dynamic of humanitarianism in Gaza and across conflict zones globally, where aid often arrives in forms that unintentionally strip people of autonomy and cultural pride. “Dignity is the aid,” Amri affirms.

Initially, Sa7ten relied heavily on Paris’s tight-knit Palestinian diaspora—organising cultural dinners, selling hand-embroidered garments, and hosting concerts that blended tradition with resistance. “It was about building a circle,” says Radejko. “A circular economy where our community supports theirs, and they support us with resilience.”

As the trust grew, Sa7ten began transitioning from event-based fundraising to direct donor support. Many of their donors are disillusioned former contributors to larger NGOs. “People wanted to give,” Amri explains, “but they wanted to know it was going directly to people who needed it—without politics or bureaucracy.”

They’ve since partnered with other grassroots initiatives across Europe, forming informal networks to share resources and information. Their Gaza team, composed of community members—not outsiders—documents every project meticulously. “Even with limited internet and power, they send us videos, photos, receipts. It’s their form of accountability. Their pride,” Radejko notes.

One recent initiative involved renovating a mosque in northern Gaza—not simply as a place of worship, but as a community centre where families can gather, share meals, and offer each other support. “It’s not about religion,” Amri clarifies. “It’s about infrastructure. Places where people can breathe together. Places that can outlast this war.”

Their efforts are guided not by top-down directives but by local ingenuity. “We don’t parachute solutions in,” Radejko insists. “Gazans are some of the most resourceful people on Earth. They’ve lived under siege for years. They know what works. We listen.”

When asked what drives them, Radejko doesn’t hesitate. “It’s not activism. It’s not even charity. It’s a responsibility. I was born into this history. And this history demands something of me.”

Amri adds, “We’re not flying flags for a particular state or solution. But we believe in liberation, and we believe in Gaza. It’s not hopeless—it’s full of life, if you bother to see it.”

Their belief in that life is embedded even in the name they chose. Sa7ten—a colloquial Arabic expression meaning to your health, often uttered while serving food—is both intimate and resilient. “It’s something warm,” Radejko says. “You say it with love. And even now, in these brutal times, we’re saying it to Gaza.”

As of this writing, Gaza remains on the precipice of official famine. WHO’s remaining malnutrition treatment supplies can serve only 500 children, just a fraction of the need. Clean water is virtually non-existent. Health care is collapsing. Entire families face starvation in a region where aid convoys often sit idle, blocked mere kilometres from those who need them.

While international bodies call for a ceasefire and the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian aid, small organisations like Sa7ten are the ones bridging the gap between moral intention and urgent reality.

“There’s no time to wait,” Amri concludes. “But there is time to act.”

Donations to the organisation’s relief activities can be made here https://www.sa7ten.org/donatenow