Um Sameh, from east Damascus, has led a tireless campaign to fight the rampant starvation gripping her besieged city. In the kitchen of an unassuming farmhouse, she and a small group of volunteers cook meals daily in a collection of enormous pots and then risk their lives to deliver food under shelling to hundreds of civilians trapped inside homes across Ghouta. Their organization, One Hand, is a call for compassion toward people of all faiths and backgrounds.

Um Sameh cuts a solitary figure, her small Suzuki weaving through the haze of shattered streets on her daily food runs in Ghouta, on the southeastern edge of Damascus. The relief provided by Um Sameh's daily deliveries is rare mercy for a civilian population pinned down in their shelters amid relentless bombardment and possible suffocation from the Syrian regime’s use of banned chemical weapons.

Um Sameh is deliberate in risking her life to venture out. “I don’t like people to come to the kitchen,” she said. “We are always afraid when it comes to people being together in a group during the shelling, so for this reason I started going to them instead.”

These words were spoken by a mother who has received little mercy herself during the tumultuous years of the Syrian conflict. One Hand's founding dates back to the early days of the siege in 2014, but the fuller story began with a very different kind of tragedy — the abduction of Um Sameh's son by government security officers in 2012.