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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

It has been 24 months since I was last inside a proper school. Two years since I listened to the start-of-class signal at the institution I attended, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes 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 conflict started. My books were burned, and companions perished.

I was in elementary level on that fateful day: the last day I entered the school building. That early hours, air raid sirens sounded through the passageways. Some pupils sobbed, others gripped each other. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her voice trembled. I remember wishing for a ordinary day; lessons, break time, a verse presentation. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my former reality.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because it represents the forfeiture of tomorrow.

Now I live with my mother and father, two brothers and female sibling in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The tent walls flap in the wind, failing to insulate. We queue for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and privacy doesn’t exist. Hope feels fragile.

At night, I look up at the stars through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they manage, saying they long for education and have kept their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel remorseful because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once envisioned becoming a teacher to support Gaza’s children acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I aim for being a reporter – to write, to speak and to show the world what it signifies to be a young person in this region. I want to share our experiences of apprehension and need, but also fortitude. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. Sometimes, I go to a modest shelter where volunteers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the energy supply stops or the attacks recommence but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who thought education could transform society.

Hostilities have stolen countless aspects; our dwellings, educational institutions and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his partner, and their offspring. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, that southern city, which is only ruins now. But the hardest loss of all is schooling, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: keep our hopes alive. We don’t want pity, we demand measures. Young residents deserve books, educational facilities and protection. Learning is not a luxury, it is a essential privilege. Gaza is not merely devastation; it is youth who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my account and I will keep drafting, even if my only possessions is a broken pencil and a scrap of damaged material.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. First in Khan Younis, then in another location, and now in this refugee settlement in the central Gaza Strip. Prior to hostilities, I typically educated multiple groups of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recall the gleam in a learner's look when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every teacher lives for.

I always thought learning should be full of life. My classroom was a space of play, aesthetics, and activity. We designed geographical illustrations, dramatized bygone episodes, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as interest substituted apprehension. Yes, even in earlier times, local youth were always afraid. My classroom was a place of safety but after 7 October, all was altered.

My school became a shelter for families fleeing the explosives. Not long later, it was struck and entirely ruined. There are almost no schools still erect in the region now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has shattered every aspect of our lives: protection, residences, educational centers, hopes. Anxiety and sorrow are perpetual experiences.

Numerous of my learners are now dead – youth who talked about becoming physicians, artists, and educators. They were deprived even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain experience starvation, displacement and weariness – and yet, they still maintain the desire for education.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I hear from a handful of them. They message inquiring: “Are you safe, teacher?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of contact amid the chaos. They question if situations will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

All over Gaza, educators, helpers and non-profits endeavor education wherever possible: in shelters, destroyed learning spaces, or packed refuges. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to declare: “We persist.” And so long as we continue learning, we will remain.

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