Salvaging education in Gaza

Classrooms across the Gaza Strip, whether in public schools or those run by the UNRWA, all currently house hundreds of thousands of displaced families. Rather than benefiting from classroom time, young and frail-bodied children are now seeking refuge from the horrors of war within these educational institutions.

Still, a number of students displaced from across the strip are attempting to overcome the threat to their education made by the devastating ramifications of war, including but certainly not limited to the Israeli bombardment of schools and universities. In the vicinity of their tents in Rafah, displaced children are taking the initiative to catch up on their missed lessons to salvage their education by any means possible.

Inside her family tent in Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, elementary teacher Doha Matar voluntarily provides lessons to scores of children throughout the day. Matar, who was displaced from the Shati camp in Gaza City, teaches Arabic and Islamic studies to small groups that gather in her tent. Similarly, Iyad Daoud, an aviation engineer displaced from Tal al-Hawa in Gaza City, has transformed a tent near the Egyptian border into a small open-air classroom. Although it lacks the most basic necessities, it still provides a space where he offers regular classes in mathematics to young children.

Such arrangements, made informally amid the small cloth tents housing the displaced, offer children an opportunity to learn despite their classrooms becoming mass shelters for a population devastated by war.