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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

It has been two years since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still distinctly recollect the sounds and smells: writing residue, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed soon after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, air raid sirens screamed through the halls. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our educator attempted reassurance, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a normal day; instruction, intermission, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Hostilities have claimed innumerable aspects. But the most painful deprivation of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I reside with my guardians, male relatives and female sibling in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The shelter coverings flap in the wind, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Power is imaginary and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At night, I observe the stars through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my companions see the comparable vista. Some contact me when they are able, expressing they yearn for classes and have kept their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to becoming a teacher to support Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a journalist – to write, to speak and to show the world what it represents to be a child in Gaza. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid loss and destruction, our expressions persist.

When connectivity is available, I endeavor to educate myself via the web. On other occasions, I visit a modest shelter where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I sense being. I recollect who I was: the young woman who cherished arithmetic and verse, who believed knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and families. I mourned my uncle, his partner, and their young ones. I lost my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I state this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Gaza’s children deserve books, learning environments and protection. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is youth who still dream beneath the drones at night. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if all I have left is a damaged writing tool and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'They message: "are you OK, teacher?"'.

An educator, 40, teacher in al-Bureij camp

I have been educating in Gaza for over ten years. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and presently in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated six classes of about fourty pupils per class, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the twinkle in a learner's look when a knowledge was acquired; the type of instance every teacher lives for.

I always thought education should be full of life. My classroom was a zone of amusement, creativity, and motion. We designed geographical illustrations, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted fear. Indeed, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a safe haven for relatives fleeing the explosives. Soon, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are very few learning institutions left standing in the region now. For two years, all has been unusual. The hostilities has shattered every facet of our existence: protection, residences, educational centers, aspirations. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Many of my learners are now dead – minors who talked about aspiring to be physicians, artists, and teachers. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience hunger, relocation and exhaustion – and yet, they still hold onto the desire for education.

Sometimes, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a handful of them. They message asking: “How are you, instructor?” We communicate short messages, short lessons, minor flashes of contact amid the disorder. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I have no answer.

All over this territory, instructors, helpers and non-profits attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

Numerous of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several