Personal Info
- Country of residence: Palestine
Information
Huda Sosebee passed away on July 15, 2009 in her home in Kent, Ohio, surrounded by her beloved family, following a seven-month battle with leukemia. As the head social worker for the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF), Huda touched the lives of thousands of sick and injured children throughout the Middle East.
She was born Huda Al-Masri on Dec. 18, 1962 in a refugee camp in Ramallah, Palestine to Ibrahim Abdullah Al-Masri and Zahraa Flaifl, who had fled their home in Jerusalem. Her mother died when Huda was only 13 years old. After earning her degree in social work from Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem, Huda began working in a rehabilitation program in Jerusalem for the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA).
It was there that she met Steve Sosebee, from Kent, OH, who had just founded PCRF in 1991 to help provide sick and injured children in the Middle East with specialized medical care not available locally. The couple married in Ramallah in 1993, and Huda became the fund’s head social worker, guiding what are now 13 full-time social workers and many volunteers. She earned a master’s degree in Public Health from Kent State University.
Huda’s great human spirit touched the lives of dozens of children throughout the years, as she personally cared for them in the Sosebee home in Kent while they received treatment in northeast Ohio.
Nearly 1,000 more children with difficult medical needs, including birth defects, were touched by Huda’s caring hands, as she helped them find free medical care in the United States, Europe and the Middle East. PCRFalso sends teams of surgeons to treat children locally. Throughout the years, Huda’s hard work and painstaking care resulted in the treatment of thousands of needy children throughout Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq.
She not only smoothed over problems with foreign hosts, or fathers afraid to let their wife and sick child travel so far from home, but organized hundreds of volunteers from local communities who opened their homes to help children make a successful recovery.
Huda and her family were in the UAE last Christmas, helping six children get X-rays at a hospital in Dubai. Since she had felt ill recently herself, she underwent some tests as well, and learned she had leukemia.
Even during her recent struggle with cancer, Huda continued to work and arrange for injured children to find host families, medical treatment and the careful attention that they otherwise would not get in their homeland. Her death is a deep loss for the poor and needy children of the Holy Land, as well as for her thousands of devoted family members and friends all over the world.
Huda is survived by her brothers, Abdullah, Ahmed, Mohammed, Mahmoud and Nasser, and sisters Hanan, Hiam and Waila. She is also survived by stepbrothers and sisters Jihan, Hana, Hala, Hisham and Nahlah.
Huda left two beautiful daughters, Deema, 12, and Jenna, 2, and her loving husband, Steve Sosebee.
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