Father & son with Kiwi Team to Gaza

by Grant Morgan
Co-organiser of Kia Ora Gaza
9 August 2010

A father and son will be among the six-person Kiwi Team heading for Gaza next month with an international aid convoy.

Roger Fowler, a 61-year-old Aucklander who holds the Queen’s Service Medal for community service, is the Team Captain. His 25-year-old son Hone, of Ngapuhi, Ngati Porou and Pakeha heritage, has also been selected for the humanitarian mission to Gaza.

The Kiwi Team, under the banner of Kia Ora Gaza, will join a land convoy leaving London on 18 September.

The London expedition will merge with two other land convoys, from Casablanca in Morocco and Doha in the Gulf, in a 500-vehicle convoy through Egypt into Gaza’s Rafah crossing. Simultaneously, a sea flotilla carrying aid will approach the shoreline of Gaza.

Thousands of volunteers from all continents will be involved in the world’s largest non-governmental aid mission.

The four other members of the Kiwi Team are:

• Chris van Ryn, Vice Captain, a photo-journalist and campaigner for human rights with Amnesty International.

• Julie Webb-Pullman, who delivered aid to poor children in the Pacific and served as a human rights observer in Latin America.

• Pat O’Dea, a longtime trade union and social justice campaigner affectionately nicknamed “Protest Pat” by his workmates.

• Mousa Taher, who has a Palestinian father and converted to Islam in 2006.

Detailed biographies of Kiwi Team members can be found on www.kiaoragaza.net.