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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 stepped into a proper school. Two years since I heard the school chime at the institution I attended, took my seat and answered questions during my favourite class. Occasionally I still vividly remember the auditory and olfactory sensations: powder from the board, wooden scraps, laughter echoing down the halls. But my educational institution is gone; it was targeted shortly after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and several classmates lost.

I was in elementary level on the seventh of October: the final day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, warning alarms blared through the halls. Some pupils sobbed, others clasped palms firmly. Our instructor sought to soothe, but even her tone wavered. I remember hoping for a normal day; instruction, recess, a poem recital. Instead, that day marked the end of my former reality.

The war has taken so much. But the most painful deprivation of all is education, because without it, our prospects disappear.

Now I reside with my parents, two brothers and sister in a packed refuge in Khan Younis. The temporary partitions sway with breezes, providing no climate control. We queue for water and food. Energy access is fantasy and personal space is absent. Optimism seems delicate.

At darkness, I observe the celestial bodies through the gaps of my temporary home and wonder if my friends see the same sky. Some message me when they can, stating they yearn for classes and have kept their former exercise books; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve forfeited all of mine.

I once aspired to entering the education field to help young residents study, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a reporter – to compose, to communicate and to demonstrate the world what it signifies to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even amid these conditions, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I try to study digitally. On other occasions, I go to a small tent where aid workers instruct us math and Arabic. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the bombing resumes but in such times, I feel alive. I recall who I was: the girl who loved numbers and poems, who believed learning could change the world.

Conflict has claimed innumerable things; our residences, learning centers and families. I mourned my paternal relative, his wife, and their young ones. I said goodbye to my cherished hometown, Rafah, which is merely debris now. But the hardest loss of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

To the international community, I state this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. Gaza’s children deserve books, educational facilities and security. Schooling is not a luxury, it is a fundamental entitlement. This region is not merely devastation; it is youth who continue to aspire beneath the drones at night. It is my narrative and I will persist in composing, even if the sole items remaining is a broken pencil and a piece of torn paper.

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

An educator, 40, instructor in central Gaza

I have been teaching in Gaza for more than a decade. Originally in that urban area, then in Deir al-Balah, and presently in the central camp in the middle of the territory. In pre-conflict times, I typically educated six classes of about dozens of learners, nearly 240 young minds eager to learn.

Teaching them was my vocation and delight in reality, and I still recollect the sparkle in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every teacher strives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My teaching space was a zone of recreation, aesthetics, and movement. We painted maps, acted out historical events, and turned lessons into stories.

Laughter always filled the room as curiosity replaced anxiety. Yes, even prior to conflict, local youth were always scared. My classroom was a secure location but after the seventh, all was altered.

My learning center became a refuge for households running from the aerial attacks. Shortly after, it was struck and completely destroyed. There are almost no learning institutions still erect in this area now. For this period, nothing has been normal. The war has broken every part of our existence: safety, homes, educational centers, dreams. Anxiety and sorrow are ever-present realities.

Many of my students are now lost – children who mentioned dreaming of doctors, painters, and teachers. They were refused even the entitlement to survival. Those who remain endure hunger, eviction and weariness – and yet, they still cling to the will to learn.

Occasionally, when the connectivity allows, I receive messages from a small number of them. They contact inquiring: “How are you, educator?” We exchange concise phrases, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the chaos. They ask if things will ever return to usual. I tell them I am uncertain.

All over the region, teachers, volunteers and organizations endeavor education in all available spaces: in shelters, damaged classrooms, or congested safe zones. Learning has become an act of defiance, a way to say: “We persist.” And provided that we persist in education, we will remain.

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