Losing out on school: how conflict and hunger rob children of their futures
Ahmad’s family moved from the West Bank to Gaza in hopes he and his siblings would receive quality schooling. “I want my kids to have a better life than mine,” says Ahmad’s mother, Nour. But nearly a year of war has destroyed or damaged roughly 560 Gazan schools, experts say, and deprived hundreds of thousands of traumatized kids of an education. Ahmed has seen bodies torn to shreds by bombings and survived multiple displacements to crowded tent camps, where temperatures soar in the summer and freeze in winter. “I fear bombings and airstrikes,” says Ahmad, whose family now lives in the central town of Deir al-Balah. “I fear when a house or tent nearby suddenly explodes and disappears.” For now, he goes to an ‘educational tent,’ where HCF supplies young students with date bars and other nutritious snacks to stave off soaring hunger and malnutrition that stalks the enclave.“This initiative tries its best to embrace kids by offering them a safe space and taking them away from difficult tasks they shouldn’t be doing,” says teacher Ikram, who founded the educational initiative. “If the war ends today, it’s going to be extremely difficult for kids to go back to schools,” Ikram adds, “or to any shape of educational normalcy.”
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