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'We seek action, not sympathy'.

Juwayriya Adwan, twelve, Khan Younis

For the past two years since I stepped into a real classroom. That long since I heard the start-of-class signal at Khawla Bint al-Azwar school, took my seat and raised my hand during my favourite class. Sometimes I still clearly recall the auditory and olfactory sensations: chalk dust, wooden scraps, joyful sounds in corridors. But my learning place was destroyed; it was targeted shortly after the hostilities erupted. My textbooks turned to ash, and companions perished.

I was in the fifth year on 7 October: the last day I entered the school building. That beginning of the day, alert signals blared through the corridors. Some children cried, others gripped each other. Our teacher tried to calm us, but even her voice trembled. I remember hoping for a ordinary day; lessons, break time, a poem recital. Instead, that day signaled the conclusion of my old life.

Conflict has stolen countless things. But the toughest sacrifice of all is education, because that is the loss of the future itself.

Now I reside with my parents, siblings and sister in a congested safe space in al-Mawasi. The shelter coverings move with air currents, failing to insulate. We wait in line for water and food. Electricity is a dream and privacy doesn’t exist. Aspiration appears brittle.

At evening, I gaze toward the stars through the openings of my shelter and wonder if my peers see the comparable vista. Some reach out when they manage, saying they miss school and have kept their old notebooks; like treasures from a lost world. I feel guilty because I’ve lost all of mine.

I once dreamed of entering the education field to help young residents acquire knowledge, even when life was hard. Now I dream of being a journalist – to compose, to speak and to show the world what it means to be a young person in this region. I want to tell our stories of anxiety and deprivation, but also bravery. Because even in this place, amid death and ruins, our voices refuse to be silent.

When online access exists, I try to study via the web. Other times, I visit a tiny space where aid workers educate us mathematics and language. The sessions are brief – the electricity cuts out or the airstrikes begin again but in these instances, I experience vitality. I recollect who I was: the young woman who adored mathematics and poetry, who thought knowledge could alter reality.

The war has taken so much; our dwellings, educational institutions and kin. I lost my family member, his partner, and their children. I lost my beautiful city, that southern city, which is nothing but rubble now. But the hardest loss of all is learning, because without it, our prospects disappear.

To the global audience, I state this: preserve our aspirations. Compassion isn't enough, we demand measures. The youth are entitled to literature, educational facilities and safety. Schooling is not an extravagance, it is a basic right. The territory is not merely devastation; it is minors who still dream beneath the drones at evening. It is my narrative 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, forty, instructor in central Gaza

I have been educating in the region for more than a decade. Originally in Khan Younis, then in a different town, and presently in the central camp in the central Gaza Strip. In pre-conflict times, I regularly instructed six classes of about 40 students each, almost two hundred forty individuals enthusiastic about knowledge.

Educating them was my purpose and joy in existence, and I still recollect the gleam in a learner's look when a new idea clicked; the kind of moment every educator strives for.

I always thought education should be dynamic. My teaching space was a area of play, creativity, and motion. We created cartographic art, acted out historical events, and transformed instruction into narratives.

Laughter always filled the room as interest displaced apprehension. Certainly, even prior to conflict, local youth were always frightened. My teaching space was a secure location but after the seventh, the situation transformed.

My educational institution became a safe haven for relatives running from the explosives. Not long later, it was attacked and completely destroyed. There are very few schools still erect in this area now. For this period, all has been unusual. The conflict has destroyed every aspect of our existence: protection, homes, educational centers, aspirations. Fear and grief are ever-present realities.

Numerous of my students are now lost – minors who talked about becoming physicians, creatives, and teachers. They were deprived even the privilege of living. Those who are still here endure malnutrition, displacement and exhaustion – and however, they still maintain the thirst for knowledge.

Occasionally, when the online access enables, I hear from a few of them. They contact asking: “Are you safe, instructor?” We share concise phrases, short lessons, small glimmers of contact amid the turmoil. They question if things will ever return to usual. I state to them I am uncertain.

All over the region, teachers, helpers and non-profits attempt instruction wherever possible: in tents, damaged classrooms, or crowded shelters. Schooling has become an act of defiance, a way to express: “Our presence continues.” And so long as we keep acquiring knowledge, we will persist.

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