Educating Gaza – Palestine Country Director reports

Educating Gaza – Palestine Country Director reports

Islamic Relief Palestine Country Director, Muneeb Abu Ghazaleh, reports:

“The education system in Palestine suffers from a number of challenges. They are mostly driven by limited resources. The ratio of classrooms to students forces school buildings to be used as two schools per building; a morning shift and an evening shift. This in turn limits the school day per shift to around four hours. As a result, the time a child should spend to innovate, to play and to participate in non-curricular activities is simply omitted from schedule.

Additionally, conflicts continue to directly affect schools and students educational experience. Hundreds of schools were damaged, affecting over 250,000 students especially in the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of teachers and students were among casualties that were killed or injured during the past few years.

The Palestinian population is a young population (more than 50% below 20 years old). Therefore, Islamic Relief believes that supporting and developing the educational system is the main strategic sector for empowering the community and alleviating the suffering of 50% of the community, plus their families and their teachers.

Giving Gaza education: one of the many conflict-damaged schools being repaired by Islamic Relief

Throughout the past couple of years, Islamic Relief has built new schools and renovated most of the damaged schools. We also introduced computer, science and technology labs to a number of schools. Additionally, Islamic Relief has been offering psychosocial support to students, and building the capacity of teachers and school counsellors on basics of pupils’ therapy and mentoring.

Currently, we have a strategic intervention in TVET sector and we help in improving the national TVET strategy, supporting both Ministry of Education and Ministry of Labour, which in turn will lead to a better future for our youth.

Despite all that has been done, the need for further intervention is still immense. Therefore, we encourage all our partners and donors to support our intervention in education to contribute to a better future for the children of Palestine.”

The original article on the Islamic Relief Palestine website can be found here. Islamic Relief has worked in Palestine since 1994, and has a permanent office in Gaza.