by Eva Bartlett, IPS, Italy - Yousef walks barefoot into a children's room with four beds and points to a snoopy-blanketed bed by the window. "That's where I sleep," he says. A red remote-controlled toy racecar sits atop a new mini-laptop. The closet is full of clothes, a pot of soup simmering on the gas range in the spacious kitchen, and the wooden dining table is piled with seasonal fruit.

Unlike the overwhelming majority of children in the Gaza Strip, the seven-year-old's naked feet are not a result of poverty. Quite the opposite, his home in the Rafah-based SOS Children's Village, run by an international non-governmental organisation (NGO), does not leave him wanting for shoes, clothes, school supplies, regular meals or a safe abode.

His home, one of 14 in the village hosting 111 orphans, is new, has plenty of natural light and is larger than the cramped refugee camp homes in which more than 75 percent of Gaza's population lives. Read full article on IPS