What It Takes to Build a School in Gaza
By the Sa7ten team.
The road to bringing education back in Gaza is not a simple one. It is not a case of putting together bricks and mortar and sending the children back to school. We are working in a landscape of forty million tonnes of debris covering bones and unexploded bombs. A world where a project that would cost $50,000- now takes $150,000, where a toilet seat alone costs $500, a single sheet of paper $3. It is a world where whatever we build, will always be at risk of being destroyed.
"Nowhere is safe, not even hospitals,” our Field Director, Abu Karam, explains. “They strike any place that helps Palestinians live. We have already lost fifteen water wells to their bombs as well as two of the camps we built. We do not fight with guns; we fight with pens and our minds. Keeping schools open is how we refuse to disappear."
Our Children Deserve Education
The University of Cambridge and UNRWA report what we see daily: nine out of ten school buildings in Gaza are now in ruins. In the North, not a single one is left intact. We know this is not an accident of war; it is a deliberate attempt to destroy our knowledge, our past, and our future.
UNICEF has repeatedly warned that Gaza’s children are becoming a 'lost generation' - denied their schools and stripped of the stability required to learn. Data shows that a combination of the blockade, the pandemic, and now this genocide has erased five to seven years of academic progress. We have reached a critical point where an entire generation is being robbed of their chance at a future.
Safety in the Ruins
Over 18,000 students and 780 teachers have been killed. Those who live are starving; there is no food in the North. We see children faint in our tents because they have not eaten for days.
“We will not bring a thousand students inside until we have strengthened the pillars. If the children must sit on rugs on the floor and use stones for desks, we will do it - so long as the roof does not fall on them during the next strike.”
We are building the Sa7ten school to ensure that children who have survived hunger and fear have a place that belongs to them. Our goal is simple: to give them a classroom where they can be children again. This will be no small feat. "Our buildings shake from the constant shelling and the bombs set off by Israeli robots," Abu Qamar says. “We will not bring a thousand students inside until we have strengthened the pillars. If the children must sit on rugs on the floor and use stones for desks, we will do it - so long as the roof does not fall on them during the next strike."
We have checked every pillar and ceiling to make sure the building is safe. However, we must start small due to our lack of funding. We begin with strong walls and a few toilets to get children off the streets and back to some sense of normalcy. We have the ability to expand but we cannot do it alone.
Teaching as an Act of Will
The Sa7ten school is just one small step to remind the world that we as Palestinians are still here, that our children’s lives and education matter as much as anyone else’s. If you are interested in learning more and supporting our goals, please email us and we can share with you our plans.
Our team has already found the structure and begun renovations, but we have come to a stand still. Now it is up to us to find the funding to rebuild. We know you share the vision in Gaza’s future, but we need concrete support to see a classroom where others see only a pile of stones.
We are ready to build. Your support makes this school a reality: www.sa7ten.org/donatenow.
