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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, sat at my desk and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still vividly remember the sounds and smells: chalk dust, pencil shavings, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was struck not long after the hostilities erupted. My learning materials incinerated, and some of my friends killed.

I was in the fifth year on that fateful day: the last day I went to school. That early hours, alert signals sounded through the halls. Some students wept, others clasped palms firmly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a routine day; teaching, intermission, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The tent walls move with air currents, failing to insulate. We wait in line for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the celestial bodies through the openings of my temporary home and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some contact me when they can, stating they miss school and have kept their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to help local youth acquire knowledge, even when existence was challenging. Now I dream of being a reporter – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it represents to be a minor in Gaza. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also courage. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our words continue.

When connectivity is available, I attempt learning digitally. Other times, I go to a modest shelter where aid workers teach us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in those moments, I sense being. I recall who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who thought education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our residences, educational institutions and relatives. I lost my family member, his wife, and their offspring. I lost my beloved urban area, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I express this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we demand measures. Gaza’s children are entitled to literature, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at darkness. It is my story 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 a refugee camp

I have been teaching in the region for over ten years. Initially in a southern city, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated several sets of about fourty pupils per class, hundreds of eager students eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still remember the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every instructor lives for.

I always was convinced education should be vibrant. My classroom was a space of amusement, creativity, and movement. We painted maps, performed past occurrences, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always filled the room as curiosity displaced anxiety. Indeed, even prior to conflict, young residents were always scared. My learning environment was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a refuge for families escaping the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions left standing in the region now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The conflict has broken every part of our existence: safety, homes, learning places, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

Many of my learners are now deceased – minors who spoke of becoming doctors, artists, and teachers. They were refused even the right to exist. Those who remain experience malnutrition, eviction and fatigue – and yet, they still maintain the desire for education.

At times, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a few of them. They message questioning: “Are you OK, instructor?” We share brief words, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the chaos. They question if situations will ever return to usual. I inform them I am uncertain.

All over this territory, educators, volunteers and non-profits endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or crowded shelters. Education has become an gesture of resistance, a way to say: “We persist.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

A significant number of us are also guardians. I am a mother of {three|several