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'We don’t want pity, we want action'.

Juwayriya Adwan, 12, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I was last inside a proper school. That long since I listened to the start-of-class signal at my former school, occupied my place and participated actively during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the familiar scents and noises: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my school no longer exists; it was targeted shortly after the hostilities erupted. My books were burned, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on 7 October: the concluding day I entered the school building. That early hours, alert signals blared through the corridors. Some children cried, others held hands tightly. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even she sounded shaky. I remember longing for a routine day; teaching, recess, a verse presentation. Instead, that day became the last page of my old life.

The war has taken so much. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I dwell alongside my parents, siblings and sister in a packed refuge in this coastal area. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, failing to insulate. We wait in line for sustenance and drinks. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I look up at the night lights through the holes of my shelter and wonder if my peers see the same sky. Some reach out when they are able, expressing they long for education and have preserved their old notebooks; like relics of a vanished time. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once envisioned entering the education field to assist Gaza’s children learn, even when existence was challenging. Now I aim for being a journalist – to write, to talk and to reveal the world what it means to be a child in the Strip. I want to tell our stories of apprehension and need, but also bravery. Because even here, amid fatality and debris, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I attempt learning digitally. Sometimes, I attend a modest shelter where helpers instruct us math and Arabic. The lessons are short – the power fails or the bombing resumes but in such times, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the girl who cherished arithmetic and verse, who was convinced learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our dwellings, learning centers and kin. I mourned my uncle, his spouse, and their offspring. I forfeited my cherished hometown, my previous home, which is nothing but rubble now. But the toughest sacrifice of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the international community, I express this: preserve our aspirations. We seek no sympathy, we require steps. Gaza’s children merit books, educational facilities and protection. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. The territory is not only destruction; it is minors who continue to aspire amid unmanned aircraft at evening. It is my account and I will continue writing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a fragment of ripped sheet.

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

An educator, 40, teacher in central Gaza

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. First in a southern city, then in another location, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed multiple groups of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Teaching them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still remember the gleam in a student’s eyes when a concept was understood; the sort of occasion every instructor strives for.

I always thought learning should be dynamic. My teaching space was a space of recreation, creativity, and motion. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Merriment always permeated the space as inquisitiveness substituted apprehension. Certainly, even before the war, young residents were always scared. My teaching space was a place of safety but after that day, the situation transformed.

My school became a safe haven for families running from the bombs. Shortly after, it was attacked and totally demolished. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The war has shattered every aspect of our reality: security, homes, schools, dreams. Apprehension and mourning are perpetual experiences.

A significant number of my learners are now lost – minors who spoke of dreaming of doctors, creatives, and educators. They were denied even the right to exist. Those who survive endure hunger, displacement and weariness – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the internet enables, I receive messages from a few of them. They contact questioning: “Are you OK, instructor?” We exchange short messages, abbreviated teaching, tiny sparks of contact amid the turmoil. They question if things will ever go back to normal. I tell them I don’t know.

Throughout the region, instructors, aid workers and non-profits endeavor education in any feasible location: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Education has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will endure.

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