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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, a temporary shelter

For the past 24 months since I was last inside a learning environment. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: writing residue, wooden scraps, cheerful echoes. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the conflict started. My textbooks turned to ash, and some of my friends killed.

I was in fifth grade on the seventh of October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That early hours, warning alarms blared through the passageways. Some students wept, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her tone wavered. I remember longing for a ordinary day; lessons, break time, a literary performance. Instead, that day marked the end of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my guardians, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The tent walls sway with breezes, keeping neither cold nor heat away. We line up for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and personal space is absent. Hope feels fragile.

At darkness, I look up at the celestial bodies through the gaps of my shelter and question if my friends see the identical heavens. Some reach out when they manage, expressing they long for education and have retained their previous journals; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve misplaced all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to assist Gaza’s children study, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a writer – to compose, to speak and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a minor in this region. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also courage. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When there’s some internet, I try to study via the web. Other times, I attend a small tent where aid workers instruct us mathematics and language. The lessons are short – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recall who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who was convinced learning could change the world.

The war has taken so much; our homes, learning centers and families. I grieved for my uncle, his wife, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my beautiful city, that southern city, which is merely debris now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I state this: keep our hopes alive. We seek no sympathy, we want action. Young residents merit texts, learning environments and protection. Learning is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. Gaza is not only destruction; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if my only possessions is a fractured utensil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, forty, instructor in al-Bureij camp

I have been instructing in Gaza for over ten years. Initially in that urban area, then in a different town, and currently in al-Bureij camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I used to teach several sets of about 40 students each, nearly 240 young minds enthusiastic about knowledge.

Instructing them was my mission and happiness in reality, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every teacher cherishes.

I always thought education should be full of life. My teaching space was a space of amusement, aesthetics, and activity. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Joy always permeated the space as interest substituted anxiety. Certainly, even before the war, local youth were always afraid. My teaching space was a protected zone but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a safe haven for relatives fleeing the aerial attacks. Soon, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are very few educational facilities left standing in Gaza now. For this period, everything has been abnormal. The hostilities has destroyed every aspect of our reality: security, residences, schools, dreams. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my learners are now dead – youth who spoke of aspiring to be doctors, creatives, and educators. They were refused even the privilege of living. Those who remain live with hunger, displacement and exhaustion – and nevertheless, they still maintain the desire for education.

At times, when the connectivity enables, I get in touch with a small number of them. They message asking: “Are you OK, educator?” We communicate concise phrases, abbreviated teaching, small glimmers of interaction amid the disorder. They inquire if situations will ever revert to standard. I state to them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, teachers, volunteers and non-profits attempt instruction in all available spaces: in temporary structures, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Learning has become an demonstration of perseverance, a way to declare: “We are still here.” And provided that we continue learning, we will remain.

A significant number of us are also parents. I am a guardian of {three|several