Support · Voice in Focus 2026
Asem Al Jerjawi.
Writer and journalistGaza, Palestine
“I have lost my home and I feel I may be losing my homeland too.”
Truth as a lifeline
These voices document the unspeakable. They preserve memory. They resist forgetting.
In times of forced displacement and imposed starvation—as witnessed in Gaza—truth becomes a lifeline. Stories shared by journalists, photographers and everyday people on the ground, often in real time and at great personal risk, are a last line of defence against erasure.
CIE’s 2026 Voice in Focus is 23-year-old journalist Asem Al Jerjawi, based in Gaza. His reporting documents displacement, cultural loss, creative resistance and the everyday realities of people living through war.
Writing, art and memory
When material for survival becomes a canvas.
Asem has reported on Gaza’s artists transforming flour sacks and aid packaging into records of displacement, hunger, identity and resistance.
These works make material scarcity visible while preserving experiences that might otherwise disappear. Journalism carries those testimonies beyond Gaza and keeps the people behind them present.
Read “Art as survival” ↗A route to continue
Help Asem reach Dublin.
Asem has been accepted to several Master’s programmes and has chosen University College Dublin. The university has waived his tuition fees.
He still needs €25,000 for living expenses and the practical support required to establish himself in Ireland. The CIE Fund invites institutions, organisations and individuals to help make this next step possible.
Selected writing
Witness, memory and cultural survival
Asem’s published work records experiences of displacement, disability, cultural destruction and creative resistance.
Support Asem Al Jerjawi
Help a voice continue to write and remember.
Use the CIE donation instructions and include “Support CIE Exceptional Voices Fund – Asem Al Jerjawi” as the bank-transfer reference. Donors can contact CIE for questions, receipts and updates.