Folks, just a heads up, I’ve closed new verification sign ups on Gaza Verified for about two weeks.
We will restart scheduling folks for calls on November 14th with calls to resume on November 17th.
We’ve taken this decision to allow @joynewacc (who, as you know, is herself being forced to endure Israel’s genocide in Gaza) and me time to tend to the people and things we’ve both been neglecting in the past three months as we’ve rushed from one thing to another with Gaza Verified (setting up the site, the emergency campaign, the site redesign/automatic scheduling system, and verifying and interacting on a daily basis with 60 families to help boost their voices and protect their accounts on the Fediverse as well as provide them with technical support, etc., when we can).
We’re both on the verge of burnout and need this time to recharge so we can keep on helping.
We are also very lucky to have @casey and @aseelfromgz joining our team to help us out going forward. (Welcome to the team, both!)
I will personally be taking this time both to return to working on Kitten (which powers Gaza Verified) and the Small Web (which I need to launch next year) as well as improving the Gaza Verified web site to enable you to donate to their fundraisers without drowning in a sea of endless almost-identical aid request messages, enable us to work better as a team, and to reduce the load on any one person going forward.
We’ve rescheduled all existing calls that we were not able to take for technical or other reasons (sometimes people just can’t make it/their Internet goes down/there is an emergency, etc.) for today and tomorrow and, once these seven calls are done, there will be no more for two weeks.
I also want to take this chance to reiterate that just because we have not talked to someone from Gaza at Gaza Verified, it does not mean that they are a scammer. It just means we haven’t had a chance to talk to them yet. Please remember that Gaza Verified exists to protect our friends in Gaza from scammers on Mastodon and that we’ve not had one person who has shown up for an interview not turn out to be a Palestinian from Gaza.
If you want to help, please take a moment to follow the accounts of our existing members and contribute to their fundraisers if you can. Or just send them a few words of support. And share their posts.
And please let our friends and families in Gaza know that Mastodon and the fediverse is a welcoming and safe space for them.
Thank you!
💕
#Gaza #Palestine #GazaVerified #isreal #genocide #etnicCleansing #settlerColonialism #apartheid #StopIsrael #StopTheGenocide #FreePalestine
