Help displaced children in Gaza obtain an education!

Abdullah Algherbawi is organizing this fundraiser.

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This is the fundraising page of Al Jawad School for displaced children in Al Mawasi in Zawaideh. “Al Jawad” is one of the 99 names of God in Islam, it means “the most generous”. And at the same time, the word jawad in Arabic is used to refer to horses – so it fits our mission.

The school is a shared initiative between Sulala Animal Rescue and Hadeel Al Gharbawi, a journalist in the Gaza Strip. Seeing the immense suffering displaced Gaza children are currently going through, it was Hadeel’s idea to start a school. She shared the idea with Sulala Animal Rescue – who built the school tents, Sulala will give supervise and provide practical support.

We see the school as an opportunity for children in the camp to have meaningful daytime activities, while receiving emotional support from our psychologist, learn languages, maths, kindness, be taught essential skills such as hygiene to increase their survival chances in these times of diseases and epidemics. They will learn kindness towards animals as well.

Since the 7th of October, every child’s life in Gaza has been overturned drastically.

Hundreds of thousands of children lost their family homes and ended up in tent camps with extremely limited hygiene and even limited food. They lost their toys, their favorite sweets, they were separated from their friends and they have spent the last nine months powerless witnessing their parents suffer through tremendous stress trying to keep them safe. Thousands of children have lost parents and close family members, while having witnessed unspeakable horror from seeing body parts being pulled from under the rubble, to starvation and desperation and the full-blown collapse of Gazan society.

Not all children have tents. Some life on sidewalks and intersections. We know that severe traumas such as these have an immense impact on a child’s development. We know these children are scarred for life, and unfortunately, they will likely be more inclined towards violence and desperation when they reach adulthood. This is the case for any human child that suffers this severe level of trauma, and science proves it.

We want to create a context for children that can help limit the impact of the trauma they are living through – A place their minds can be stimulated, and where they can make up for lost school year, as their schools were either destroyed or turned into shelters for the displaced. They will learn maths and languages, express themselves through drawing and art, and spend a day with their peers and a teacher instead of roaming around the camps and waiting in line for food. During this time in Gaza, many children have become unsupervised or get separated from their families after losing their way. This leaves them vulnerable to exploitation and danger. In our school tents they are safe.

At this moment we have three teachers: Aseel Al Gharbawi (Hadeel’s sister) teaches maths and art, Mohammed Siyam teaches Arabic and community upbringing, and Hadeel teaches English while she is also in charge for the general organization of the camp school. We are doing interviews to hire a psychologist and an animal rights teacher.

It is important for us to teach children that animals are our companions and that they deserve to be treated well and to be looked after. So we spend a lot of time talking to the children about animals, we teach them about the different animal species in Gaza and we encourage them to feed and help them when they can. This is also what our religion teaches us.

Our project still needs a lot of funds, as we need to buy stationary, books, uniforms and backpacks for the children. We also need to pay the teacher’s wages, and as you know everything in Gaza had become very expensive. We still need to install toilets for the children as well. These essentials are often forgotten but are very important in a camp where children lack the basic necessities.

We want to buy a printer to print papers and exams for children, and we need to provide clean, pure water for the children to drink, in addition to that we need to provide school chairs for seating during school hours, and we also need to establish more than one educational camp in more than one governorate, so we need a lot of seats and tents that we will use By creating it.

Establishing an internet line and buying computers is another goal we would love to accomplish. When this school is finished, we want to build a school in each tent camp in Gaza. We really hope you will consider supporting us and the children of Gaza.