Ms. Rachel, the Beyoncé for 1-year-olds, is using her platform of millions to advocate for the children of Gaza. Since May 2024, Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, has worked to put a face to the crisis by posting videos with a Palestinian double-amputee child named Rahaf, raised over $50,000 to aid children in need across the world, and, in recent months, given interviews explaining “the basis of everything for me is that children are equal, that they all deserve everything they need to thrive.”

Ms. Rachel’s Gaza advocacy became part of tabloid gossip following a June 8 interview in which Olivia Munn said she doesn’t let her kids watch Ms. Rachel because “these kid shows drive me crazy.” Ms. Rachel viewed the controversy surrounding Munn’s comment as a distraction, writing to People on Instagram that “I’d rather you cover me advocating for kids in Gaza who are literally starving, largest cohort of child amputees in modern history, thousands & thousands killed – no medical care, no education, no homes… do better!!!” Below, all the work Ms. Rachel is doing for kids around the world that doesn’t include sing-alongs.

She raised $50,000 for the Children’s Emergency Fund

After joining Cameo on May 13, 2024, Ms. Rachel raised and donated $50,000 to the Children’s Emergency Fund, which, she noted at the time, “aids children in critical regions like Gaza, Sudan, and Ukraine.” It was her first time publicly supporting Gaza. The post initially garnered backlash from her followers — which one could assume are mostly parents of young children themselves — who made comments like “What about Israeli children Ms Rachel,” and told her she should instead make a video on the children who were “kidnapped from their cribs or the ones who were burned to death,” per The Guardian. The comments have since been disabled.

“The bullying is so bad,” the typically colorful creator said in an uncharacteristically dark response video three days later. “It’s so bad. But I can handle this.”

In the caption, she added “I care deeply for all children. Palestinian children, Israeli children, children in the US – Muslim, Jewish, Christian children – all children, in every country. Not one is excluded.”

Ms. Rachel has kept her statements focused on the children. On November 26, 2024, she posted about youth in Gaza and other countries who were “acutely malnourished” and posted in support of the work of World Food Program USA on December 3. On December 10, she shared “Children have the right to live,” along with the then-death toll of over 14,500 children in Gaza, per UNICEF.

She’s introducing Palestinian children to her audience worldwide.

On January 18, 2025, Ms. Rachel introduced her followers to Rahaf, a 3-year-old Palestinian double amputee who lost both her legs in an airstrike before being medically evacuated from Gaza, whom she met through the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. In a May 12, 2025, post, she wrote that Rahaf is now thriving because she has access to medical care, food, water, and a safe place to live. “It’s so clear what we need to give children so they can grow up into healthy, happy adults … I know how crucial the first few years are for brain development and the lifelong effects trauma and malnutrition have on the brain,” she said in an interview with The Independent this past January. “It’s a failure of humanity to deny children food, water, medical care, shelter, and education, and to not protect children from violence.”

Ms. Rachel’s goal, in her videos with Rahaf, is to personalize the humanitarian crisis in Gaza for viewers. In a now-pinned video of her playing with Rahaf on May 21, the two sing a simple song about sleeping while captions share Rahaf’s story. “One minute I was pretending to be bunnies with Rahaf and the next minute I was video chatting with her two adorable, young brothers in Gaza, as her mom, Israa, held the phone up for me,” Ms. Rachel wrote in the caption of the video. “I watched Israa look at them proudly, like I look at my son. It was a drastic snap back into reality. I imagined myself holding the phone in the US with my daughter, now a double amputee from an airstrike, away from my son in Gaza, unable to help him.” On May 25, she shared a heart-wrenching photo of Rahaf directly post-amputation, learning that she’d permanently lost her legs. And most recently, on June 1, Ms. Rachel shared a video of her saying “I love you” to Rahaf as they hugged — with Rahaf’s new prosthetic legs clearly visible.

In May, Ms. Rachel told the New York Times that “caring about children in Gaza is a direct continuation of the work I’ve been doing most of my life.”

She shared prayers for children in both Gaza and Israel.

Ms. Rachel addressed children in Israel directly for the first time on May 23, 2024 — ten days after her initial Cameo fundraiser began — when she posted “a prayer” for both children in Israel and children in Gaza to her Instagram. “This is a prayer for all the children, please stop hurting them,” she said. She added, “This is a prayer for all the hostages,” referring to Hamas’s Israeli hostages in the wake of October 7.

On May 4 this year, Ms. Rachel made another post on her Instagram sharing compassion for the families of the Israeli hostages of Hamas. “I’m thinking not only of the Israeli children taken hostage but also those who witnessed horrific acts of violence that day – their innocence stolen in an instant,” she wrote, referring to Hamas’s actions on October 7. “No child, regardless of where they live, should ever experience such unspeakable terror, loss, or sadness.” In a post on May 8, Ms. Rachel added that “I’ve met with a close family member of the hostages, whose family had children taken hostage and still has family members in captivity. If you sat with this family member and listened—if you thought of your own precious family—there’s no way you wouldn’t feel absolute anguish and wish for nothing more than this family to be whole again.”

She’s willing to “risk everything” in her career.

Outside Instagram comments, antisemitism watchdog group StopAntisemitism has virulently criticized Ms. Rachel and her support of Palestinian children. The group sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi on April 7, 2025, saying “Given the vast sums of foreign funds that have been directed toward propagandizing our young people on college campuses, we suspect there is a similar dynamic in the online influencer space,” per the New York Post. The group also accused her of posting only about Israeli children due to public outcry. She directly responded to StopAntisemitism’s claims in the New York Times on May 14. “This accusation is not only absurd, it’s patently false,” she said. “The reason I post about Israeli children is because I care deeply about them. The accusation that I would be doing it for any other reason is outrageous and wrong.”

Given the controversy, WBUR asked Ms. Rachel on June 3 if there has been pushback from her financial backers. “There has been, but I wouldn’t be Ms. Rachel if I didn’t deeply care about all kids,” she said. “And I would risk everything, and I will risk my career over and over to stand up for them. It’s all about the kids for me.”

Ms. Rachel also addressed the controversy more generally in a May 12 interview with Mehdi Hasan on Zeteo. “It’s sad that people try to make it controversial when you speak out for children that are facing immeasurable suffering,” she said. “I think it should be controversial to not say anything.”

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 “I would risk everything, and I will risk my career over and over to stand up for them. It’s all about the kids for me.”