Her Story
Gaza engineer Azza Hamid rebuilds work and wins
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
Gaza engineer Azza Hamid won first place in Palestine’s 2026 Business Women Excellence Award after rebuilding an architecture and engineering business that she says lost its office, equipment and members of its team during the war.
The official award programme was organised by the Business Women Forum–Palestine with Bank of Palestine. WAFA’s account of the ceremony confirms that a woman from Gaza took first place. A subsequent Raya interview identifies her as Hamid and her project as Render Group, an arts centre for architecture and engineering.
The award is a verified result. The story of the business’s losses and recovery comes from Hamid’s own interview and is attributed to her; Times of Palestine has not independently audited the company’s accounts or casualty record.
An architecture office became a shared workspace#
Hamid told Raya that she founded Render Group in 2019 to provide architectural design, interior design and engineering plans. She said her home was destroyed early in the war and the office sustained losses exceeding $30,000. Members of the team were killed, she said, while the halt in construction and higher operating costs stripped the business of its normal market.
Keeping the office alive mattered beyond one founder. Hamid said it supports ten families. With conventional building work constrained, the project expanded into a workspace with electricity and internet for students and graduates, and offered training in engineering, technology and artificial intelligence.
That shift explains why the award belongs in an economic story, not only an awards diary. Render Group adapted scarce infrastructure into a product: a place where other people could study, work remotely and learn. The value of electricity and connectivity in Gaza is not decorative overhead; it can determine whether a student submits an assignment or a freelancer completes paid work.
The record separates achievement from claim#
Three kinds of evidence sit together here. The forum’s award page establishes the programme and prizes. WAFA establishes the public ceremony and Gaza winner. Hamid’s interview supplies the business history, dollar loss, employment count and account of how the workspace changed.
Those interview details are valuable because they show the decisions behind the result, but they remain her account. The public pages reviewed for this report do not include audited financial statements, a company-registry extract or a list of award judges’ scores. None is required to report that she won; all would be useful for a deeper profile of the firm’s scale and governance.
What the prize can compound#
The Business Women Forum launched the award during its twentieth anniversary year. Its public page lists cash prizes for the first three places, alongside a selection process for women-led businesses. A prize can replace equipment or pay operating costs, but the larger test is whether the winner can translate recognition into durable work for the families and students connected to the business.
Hamid’s account offers one practical lesson for Gaza’s reconstruction economy: professional firms do not have to wait for large building contracts to preserve skills. A design office can train graduates, share power and connectivity, and keep a team attached to its profession while the construction market is constrained.
The next evidence worth publishing is concrete: how the award money is used, how many training places the centre provides, whether the ten supported families remain in work, and what commissions return as rebuilding expands. Those measures would show whether a one-night prize becomes a longer recovery asset.
This report reviewed the award organiser’s page, WAFA’s 14 June account and Raya’s 17 June interview, all accessed on 3 August 2026. Claims about losses, employment and the death of team members are presented as Hamid’s account. The article makes no allegation against her or another party, so no adverse right of reply was required.
