The Teen Sisters Rebuilding Gaza: Earth Prize Winners Tala & Farah Mousa

Since October 2023, much of the world's attention has been focused on the destruction in Gaza. This conversation is about something we hear much less about: rebuilding.

Meet Tala and Farah Mousa, two teenage sisters from Gaza and winners of The Earth Prize Middle East, one of the world's leading environmental competitions for teenagers. Their project, Build Hope is recycling the enormous volumes of rubble left behind by destroyed buildings and transforming it into reusable bricks to help rebuild their communities. The idea began with a Year 9 textbook in Tala's school bag. Today, it has the potential to give communities beyond Gaza, the tools to rebuild using what's already around them. It's an idea that has the potential to reduce waste, lower rebuilding costs and support reconstruction in disaster and war zones around the world.

Podcast Image credit: Ali Awad

In this episode:

Displacement and disruption - life as a teenager in GazaThe inspiration behind their award-winning projectTheir vision for helping communities beyond GazaWhy rebuilding deserves as much attention as destructionTimestamps:

00:35 What we know about Gaza and the Middle East Region

04:18 Introducing Tala and Farah Mousa

05:14 What they want us to know about their community

05:58 The inspiration behind Build Hope

08:12 A family and community project

09:21 The problem with rubble

09:54 Why its important for people in Gaza to have the tools to rebuild themselves