We Are Not Numbers — Gaza youth writing project

We Are Not Numbers is a Gaza-based writing project that pairs young Palestinian writers with English-language mentors around the world. Conceived in 2014 by the American journalist Pam Bailey, it was launched in early 2015 in collaboration with Ramy Abdu of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor and the Gazan writer Ahmed Alnaouq, among others. The project’s name states its premise: that Palestinians in Gaza should be known as people with lives, hopes, and stories, not as numbers in news reports.

The project has since supported hundreds of contributors and published well over a thousand essays and poems, written during and between repeated military assaults on the Strip. A selection of this work was collected in the anthology We Are Not Numbers: The Voices of Gaza’s Youth (2025), edited by Ahmed Alnaouq and Pam Bailey.

Why it matters

• Direct, first-person English-language testimony from young people living under blockade and war.
• The mentorship model develops Palestinian writers’ craft while connecting them to international readers without intermediaries.
• Its archive documents everyday life in Gaza — study, work, family, grief, and aspiration — largely absent from headline coverage.

Key resources

• We Are Not Numbers homepage
• About the project