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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, a temporary shelter

For the past two years since I was last inside a learning environment. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, occupied my place and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still vividly remember the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, pencil shavings, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was struck soon after the conflict started. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That beginning of the day, alert signals sounded through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, recess, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, two brothers and sister in a crowded shelter in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We line up for nourishment and hydration. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my temporary home and wonder if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, expressing they miss school and have preserved their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once dreamed of pursuing pedagogy to assist Gaza’s children study, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When there’s some internet, I try to study digitally. Sometimes, I go to a small tent where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The instruction is limited – the electricity cuts out or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our homes, educational institutions and relatives. I grieved for my family member, his spouse, and their young ones. I lost my beloved urban area, my previous home, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the global audience, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we want action. The youth merit literature, educational facilities and security. Education is not optional, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not merely devastation; it is minors who persist in hoping beneath the drones at evening. It is my story and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

'Pupils inquire: "Are you alright, educator?"'.

An educator, 40, instructor in a refugee camp

I have been teaching in this area for more than a decade. Initially in that urban area, then in another location, and presently in this refugee settlement in the heart of the region. Prior to hostilities, I used to teach multiple groups of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds keen on education.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recollect the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every instructor lives for.

I always thought instruction should be dynamic. My teaching space was a space of amusement, art, and movement. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always occupied the area as interest substituted apprehension. Certainly, even in earlier times, young residents were always frightened. My learning environment was a secure location but after the seventh, everything changed.

My school became a safe haven for households fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was attacked and entirely ruined. There are hardly any learning institutions still erect in Gaza now. For 24 months, all has been unusual. The war has shattered every facet of our reality: safety, homes, educational centers, aspirations. Anxiety and sorrow are constant companions.

A significant number of my pupils are now lost – children who spoke of becoming medical professionals, artists, and educators. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience hunger, displacement and weariness – and however, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They write asking: “How are you, teacher?” We share brief words, miniature instruction, small glimmers of contact amid the disorder. They inquire if circumstances will ever go back to normal. I tell them I don’t know.

All over the region, instructors, aid workers and charities try to teach in any feasible location: in shelters, ruined educational areas, or packed refuges. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “We are still here.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

Numerous of us are also caregivers. I am a parent of {three|several