Before displacement reshaped her life, Haneen Amassi was already deeply rooted in art.
A Palestinian artist from the Gaza Strip, her work had long been a way to understand herself and the world around her.
That sense of purpose would soon be tested in ways she could not have imagined.
Art had always been part of Haneen’s life, but it wasn’t until she studied Fine Arts that it became something deeper, a way to understand herself and the world around her. From that point on, she began to see her artistic ability as a responsibility, something that could serve a greater purpose.
She found her voice through caricature, a form she taught herself outside her university curriculum. For her, caricature became a direct and honest language, capable of expressing pain and injustice.
After graduating, Haneen worked at the university for a year before moving on to teach art in public schools.
There, she taught caricature, organized exhibitions, and led competitions, driven by a belief that art can express what words cannot.
Alongside her teaching, she participated in numerous local and international exhibitions and competitions, earning advanced placements at the global level.
Forced to leave under attack, like generations before
In the early days of the war in Gaza, she knew immediately that this assault was unlike anything she had lived through before. The bombardment was relentless, and the number of people killed rose at a terrifying rate.
Like countless other families, Haneen and her loved ones were forced to flee south, taking only what they could carry. Before leaving, they locked the door of their home. They hung the key around their necks, echoing what her grandparents had done in 1948 when they were forced to leave their original village, Al-Sawafir, now within the occupied Palestinian territory.
As she walked away, Haneen took one final look at the house, leaving behind her memories and a part of herself within its walls. For her, this moment reflected a truth Palestinians know well: there is rarely a real choice, only the struggle to live in freedom.
As the war dragged on, Haneen and her family were displaced repeatedly before crossing into Egypt for urgent medical reasons. What they believed would be temporary stretched into more than a year. During that time, their home in Gaza was bombed, and everything they owned was destroyed.
Hassan’s path to Ihsana
Hassan’s career didn’t begin in the humanitarian or healthcare space. He started in finance, a field he quickly realized didn’t align with the kind of impact he wanted to have in the world.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hassan shifted into healthcare, working on vaccine-related initiatives. That experience marked a turning point. It led him to spend two years working across Africa, including a year living in Nigeria, where he became deeply involved in community health efforts, particularly around preventing cervical cancer and supporting schoolgirls.
While working in Nigeria and later Ethiopia, Hassan began to see a devastating pattern. In many Muslim communities, people were dying from entirely preventable causes. In Nigeria alone, hundreds of thousands of women died during childbirth in a single year, alongside hundreds of thousands of newborns who didn’t survive their first month of life.
What troubled Hassan most wasn’t only the scale of preventable suffering he witnessed, but the way charitable giving often fails to address it meaningfully.
At the same time, Hassan knew that Muslim communities give generously. Every year, Muslims donate hundreds of billions of dollars in charity. Yet only a small fraction of that giving is directed toward solving the most urgent and solvable problems—healthcare, education, and poverty.
The issue wasn’t a lack of compassion or resources, but a lack of clarity around where giving can do the most good.
This realization led Hassan to begin working on Ihsana, a new thought project focused on transforming how Muslim charity is understood and practiced.
The core question behind Ihsana is simple: how can everyday people, whether giving $10 or $1,000, give Sadaqah — a form of voluntary charity in Islam — more effectively? What problems can realistically be solved, and where does each dollar have the greatest impact?
Preventable maternal deaths, newborn survival, and access to education for girls are all solvable problems, Hassan believes.
The resources exist. What’s missing is direction.
Hassan needed creative support, but he wasn’t just looking for technical skill. He wanted someone who could translate complex ideas rooted in Islamic history and ethics into visual stories that would resonate emotionally with people.
More importantly, he wanted to work with people who didn’t always have access to global job opportunities.
Apricot came recommended as an organization that connects overlooked talent with meaningful work
From the beginning, the experience felt different.
They responded quickly, set up a call, and took the time to understand Hassan’s work. What stood out most was their generosity, not just financially, but in spirit too. Apricot made it clear they weren’t interested in profiting from the collaboration. Hassan was only asked to cover administrative costs.
“We love what you’re doing,” they told him. “We’ll find you an artist.”
Being brought onboard, then being seen
After losing her job, Haneen began searching online for ways to rebuild her life. When she came across Apricot, she hesitated. As an artist, she wasn’t sure there was space or a real opportunity for creative work in such a setting.
Still, she applied.
Apricot brought Haneen onboard to take on freelance graphic design work, easing her back into professional stability. What stayed with Haneen most was the feeling of being accepted before she had a chance to speak. Being from Gaza was enough. She didn’t need to justify herself or explain her pain. That moment restored her hope, which she had nearly lost.
Shortly after, she was matched with a project that would allow her artistic voice to re-emerge fully.
They did, and that’s how Hassan met Haneen
When Hassan asked Haneen to visually explore the story of Fatima al-Fihri and the Islamic concept of waqf, she responded with an abstract, visually striking piece that captured the spirit of innovation behind the idea. Rather than illustrating it literally, she conveyed its essence, heritage, intention, and continuity through form and symbolism.
Her familiarity with Islamic art and cultural history allowed her to communicate ideas in ways Hassan knew wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. Concepts that might have remained academic connected emotionally, bridging the gap between intention and understanding, between the head and the heart.
For Haneen, the project marked a turning point.
Working with Apricot restored something she thought she had lost entirely: belief in a future shaped by her own hands.
Through her work with Apricot, she explored new artistic approaches that refined and expanded her skills. While these differed from her original focus on caricature, they opened new ways of thinking about what her creativity could become across disciplines.
Today, she sees herself growing with confidence, rebuilding, and moving toward her aspirations because someone chose to see her as an artist.
For Hassan, the collaboration was quite surprising.
What surprised him most was the depth of creative talent. While the region is often associated with engineering or technical fields, artists like Haneen demonstrated a level of critical thinking and conceptual clarity that is often overlooked.
He would share an idea, and she would transform it into something tangible and compelling.
The experience reaffirmed what meaningful collaboration can look like when values align.
A shared way of working
The collaboration worked because it was grounded in shared values.
In bringing Haneen and Hassan together, Apricot did more than facilitate a project- they created the space grounded in trust, intention, and the belief that talent deserves to be seen, wherever it exists. It’s the kind of work Apricot is committed to continuing.
By:
Fatima Ahmed
