How Communal Ovens Are Helping Displaced Families Survive in Gaza

Azza Ashour kneads dough in her tent at a school shelter in Gaza, preparing bread for her five children. Every morning, the 31-year-old mother prepares the dough before carrying it to a communal oven at the school where her family has been sheltering. With little money, no regular income, and her husband having been detained by the Israeli army since May 2024, Azza stretches the dough as far as possible, sometimes filling the bread with cheese or a little chocolate when supplies are scarce.

Azza is originally from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, an area destroyed by Israel during its war. After being first displaced to southern Gaza, the family eventually settled at Cairo School in western Gaza City, which has been turned into a displacement centre where they have lived for around a year. While her family receives canned food assistance from the World Food Programme, it is often infrequent, making bread central to how she feeds her children.

The cost of cooking is another major obstacle, as Azza cannot afford to regularly buy firewood or fuel. To overcome this, she relies on a communal oven supported by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which allows displaced individuals to bake their dough for free. Before using the oven, buying daily bread could cost about 15 shekels ($5).

A few steps from where Azza collects her bread, Randa Adwan works as a baker. The 38-year-old mother of seven wakes up early to prepare dough for her children before beginning her shift at the oven from 7am to noon, baking for families. Holding a bachelor's degree in education, Randa never imagined working at a communal oven, but the circumstances of the war left her with little choice. Bakers are selected through a lottery for a one-month work placement due to a lack of jobs in Gaza, and Randa earns 70 shekels ($23) a day, helping her provide for her children while her husband remains unemployed.

The oven at Cairo School is part of an ICRC programme supporting communal ovens in schools and shelters across Gaza. The ICRC pays for the ovens and the wages of the workers who operate them, producing up to 200 loaves a day per oven. Across Gaza, the organisation supports 179 communal ovens, which produced 9.2 million loaves for about 44,000 people between January and June.

Matthew Manguet, the ICRC's Livelihoods Manager, noted that over 80 percent of people in Gaza have no job, and traditional sources of income like agriculture and fishing remain limited due to restrictions and war damage. As displacement continues, the ICRC has been increasing the number of ovens across the Strip. While Manguet describes the initiative as a small drop in the ocean, it provides essential support for families living in small tents with little space or means to cook their own food.