'Sure what else could I do?': Gala for Gaza born out of empathy and executed through community spirit
Smoke billows over Gaza Strip following an Israeli bombardment, as seen from southern Israel on Sunday. Picture: Ariel Schalit/AP
Melanie McGovern does not regard herself as an extraordinary person but, on the evidence of what was achieved in a function room in Galway on Saturday night, she will do well to convince everybody present otherwise.
When I put it to her that raising €100,000 for causes in Gaza in the space of just a few months is remarkable, she simply shrugs.
“Sure what else could I do?” she asks. It’s said half as a question, half as a statement — the Irish kind, where both humility and stubbornness meet somewhere in the middle.
When she first thought of organising a fundraiser for Gaza, she’d just returned to work after maternity leave. A working mother of three, trying to adjust to that familiar blur of school runs, emails, and living an actual life. She’d seen, like the rest of us, the images from Palestine: The dust-covered, terrorised children, the hollow-eyed parents, the hospitals reduced to rubble.
“None of us can unsee it,” she says quietly. “It was everywhere — on our phones, the radio, the telly. Every time I fed our baby or sat down for five minutes, there it was. I felt … paralysed, I suppose. Helpless. And then one evening I thought, right, I’ll just do something. Anything.”
That something turned into the Gala for Gaza, a fundraiser held in the Ardilaun Hotel last Saturday night. Over 350 people attended with many more looking for tickets. The event raised over €100,000 — and counting — for two charities: Gaza go Bragh and Children Not Numbers.
Not bad for an idea that began as a WhatsApp group.
“I started a group chat,” she laughs, shaking her head at the absurdity of it all.
“People wanted in. Everyone was feeling the same — that sense of impotence. We can’t stop the bombs, but maybe we can help the people on the ground.”
Word spread, the WhatsApp group grew. Local businesses offered vouchers and prizes. A few well-known Galway faces put their names forward.
When Sharon Shannon — the musical maestro herself — said she’d perform, Melanie realised there was no turning back.
“I remember thinking: ‘Oh God, this is real now. Sharon Shannon is coming. This actually has to happen now.’”
Good intentions are one thing, pulling off an event like that is another. Melanie had no experience in event planning, no connections in the hospitality industry, and no spare time.
“I work full-time,” she says, “and the kids are small — six, three, and the baby. I was running on fumes. But every time I’d think, ‘this is mad, I can’t do this,’ someone would message offering help. It felt like Galway itself was pushing me along.”
And that, perhaps, is the heart of it. There’s something quintessentially Galway about the Gala for Gaza — an event born out of empathy and executed through community spirit.
“The amount of kindness was unreal,” she says.
“People I’d never met were donating art, jewellery, weekends away. Musicians were saying: ‘Just tell us when and where.’”
However, there was unease too — a quiet, persistent question beneath the surface. How do you hold a gala when the very people you’re raising money for are still dying by the hour?
Melanie nods. “That’s the part that nearly broke me,” she admits. “I’d be sitting there designing posters or emailing sponsors and then I’d see a headline — a school hit, a family gone.
"I’d think: Who are we to be organising a dinner and music when mothers over there can’t even feed their children?”
“In the end,” she says, “the gala wasn’t a celebration of tragedy — it was a refusal to look away. It was a gathering of solidarity, of love. People needed somewhere to bring their grief and their anger.”
On the night, the ballroom was filled to capacity. There was music, poetry, and laughter, but also moments of silence - deliberate pauses, to remember what it was all for.
Performances from soprano Celine Byrne and Irish-Palestinian musician Roisin El Charif were representative of the calibre of artists that contributed on the night.
Catherine Connolly TD was the guest speaker.
“She made a point of saying she wasn’t there as a presidential candidate,” Melanie recalls, “but as a human being who refuses to stay quiet. She got a standing ovation for that.”
Patrons were encouraged to download the No Thanks app, a Palestinian designed application that assists consumers in linking products to the BDS movement. There was an ethical bar, which stocked Palestine Cola instead of Coca-Cola, as well as ethical alternatives to mixers.
In typical Irish fashion, there was a raffle. In even more typical Irish fashion, the total raised kept growing long after the night ended.
“The donations kept coming even this morning. They're still coming in now," she says.
What was just as striking as the generosity were the conversations.
There was a lot of emotion in the room on Saturday night. A sense amongst a community that — being there, surrounded by others who cared — was the first time many people had fully bought into the notion that they contribute to a change they wanted to see.
“Hope and education. That’s what it was really about.”
“We should never have to do one again. That's the sad part,” she says.
"Gaza’s not going away. And neither is Galway’s heart.”
Reflecting on an evening that showcased the extraordinary in ordinary people, one can’t help think how the world feels increasingly divided between those who look away and those who cannot.
Melanie falls firmly into the latter camp. She didn’t wait for permission, expertise, or perfect timing. She saw horror and met it with stubborn humanity.
Maybe that’s what solidarity really is — not the grand gesture, but the small, stubborn insistence that even in the darkest of nights, a light can be lit in Galway.
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