Dr Olfat Mahmoud is the founder of Union Aid Abroad- APHEDA's partner organisation, Palestinian Women’s Humanitarian Organisation (PWHO). She is also an internationally recognised peace activist, a registered nurse, and most recently, the recipient of a doctorate. Dr Mahmoud is a Palestinian refugee, a descendant of the Christian and Muslim people who were forced from their homeland in the 1948 Nakba, ‘Catastrophe’, and who fled Palestine in the period leading up to – and after – the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.