Yasser Abu Jamei builds shelters from 250 cans in Gaza

A Gaza engineer has started turning empty food cans into emergency shelters for animals after Israel’s bombing campaign destroyed homes and left thousands of pets and livestock stranded without cover.

The project began in central Gaza last week when engineer Yasser Abu Jamei noticed stray dogs and cats shivering under rubble or baking in the sun after the latest Israeli airstrikes. With regular building materials scarce and prices skyrocketing, he began collecting flattened tin cans from ruined kitchens and workshops. By flattening and riveting the metal together, he builds small arched shelters just big enough for a dog or a goat to lie inside and escape the heat or rain. Abu Jamei has already put up 15 shelters across three neighborhoods and says he has requests from another 20 families.

Each shelter uses roughly 250 cans and takes about three hours to assemble. Abu Jamei’s team of three volunteers collects cans door-to-door and from bomb sites, then sterilizes and paints them with donated whitewash to reflect sunlight. The shelters cost almost nothing—about $5 in wire and rivets—compared with $200 for a basic plastic kennel that often tears in the wind. Local vets say they have seen fewer animals with burns and heatstroke since the shelters appeared, though many more are still needed.

Abu Jamei wants to scale up to 100 shelters in the next month if he can secure more volunteers and a small grant. He is also sharing his design online so other engineers in the West Bank and Lebanon can copy it. The shelters won’t solve the hunger crisis or the lack of medical care for pets, but they are a cheap, immediate fix that keeps animals alive while their owners rebuild—or wait.