🔗 Share this article

'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 learning environment. Two years since I listened to the school chime at my former school, took my seat and raised my hand during my preferred subject. Occasionally I still distinctly recollect the auditory and olfactory sensations: writing residue, sharpener leftovers, joyful sounds in corridors. But my educational institution is gone; it was bombed shortly after the war began. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in fifth grade on that fateful day: the concluding day I attended classes. That morning, air raid sirens blared through the halls. 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; lessons, intermission, a literary performance. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my previous existence.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I dwell alongside my guardians, siblings and female sibling in a crowded shelter in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At evening, I observe the celestial bodies through the holes of my temporary home and wonder if my companions see the identical heavens. Some contact me when they are able, saying they yearn for classes and have preserved their previous journals; like treasures from a lost world. I feel remorseful because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help local youth study, even when circumstances were difficult. Now I hope for being a journalist – to write, to communicate and to reveal the world what it represents to be a child in this region. I want to narrate our accounts of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even here, amid loss and destruction, our words continue.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I attend a modest shelter where volunteers educate us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I sense being. I remember who I was: the student who loved numbers and poems, who believed education could transform society.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, schools and relatives. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their young ones. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

To the world, I say this: don’t let our dreams die. We seek no sympathy, we want action. The youth deserve books, schools and safety. Learning is not optional, it is a basic right. This region is not only destruction; it is minors who still dream under aerial surveillance at evening. It is my narrative and I will keep drafting, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

'Students ask: "Teacher, are you safe?"'.

Naglaa Weshah, forty, teacher in a refugee camp

I have been educating in the region for a substantial period. Originally in that urban area, then in a different town, and presently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. Prior to hostilities, I regularly instructed several sets of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals eager to learn.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in reality, and I still recollect the twinkle in a pupil's gaze when a knowledge was acquired; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always believed education should be vibrant. My classroom was a area of play, creativity, and motion. We created cartographic art, performed past occurrences, and turned lessons into stories.

Joy always permeated the space as curiosity replaced fear. Indeed, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My learning environment was a place of safety but after that day, the situation transformed.

My learning center became a shelter for relatives fleeing the aerial attacks. Not long later, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are very few educational facilities remaining intact in the region now. For two years, nothing has been normal. The hostilities has broken every part of our existence: safety, dwellings, educational centers, hopes. Apprehension and mourning are constant companions.

Numerous of my pupils are now dead – youth who mentioned aspiring to be medical professionals, painters, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who survive endure malnutrition, displacement and fatigue – and yet, they still hold onto the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the online access allows, I get in touch with a small number of them. They write questioning: “Are you safe, instructor?” We share brief words, abbreviated teaching, minor flashes of contact amid the chaos. They ask if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

All over this territory, teachers, aid workers and charities endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Schooling has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will persist.

Many of us are also parents. I am a mother of {three|several