Back to School in Gaza: How Hope Is Rebuilding a Generation's Future

September 19, 2026, isn't just a date on the calendar; it's a lifeline. Gaza's Ministry of Education and Higher Education has officially declared this the first day back to school, a step forward after nearly three years of disrupted learning. For the estimated 700,000+ school-aged children across Gaza (ages 4 to 17), this moment carries the weight of deferred dreams and a hope that refuses to be buried in the rubble. 

But hope alone doesn't fill a backpack or rebuild a classroom. Zakat Foundation of America is on the ground, turning hope into action by providing the school supplies, safe learning spaces, and the support these children need to reach beyond the destruction and reclaim their future. This is more than back-to-school season. It's a movement to give a generation the chance to learn and dream again; and you can be part of it. 

Education is deeply valued across Gaza and the West Bank, so much so that, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, literacy rates among 15-to-24-year-olds stood at roughly 97.9–98.1% in the years before the war, among the highest in the region. 

For nearly three years, "school" in Gaza has not meant a building. It could refer to a tent, a borrowed corner of a damaged wall, or an empty space. An estimated 93–98% of school buildings across the Strip have been damaged; more than 93% now need major rehabilitation or full reconstruction. Some of what's still standing has become shelter for displaced families; creating one more room a child can no longer study with a pencil and a notebook. 

And still, families keep asking. They ask education workers when the next learning space will open. They ask their children to keep their old schoolbooks, even the water-damaged ones, just in case. In a place where so much has been taken, the desire to learn is one of the few things the war hasn't touched. 

A few weeks ago, this school was an empty stretch of ground. Now there are rows of white tents, and inside them, whiteboards mounted, desks lined up, chairs waiting to be filled. 

Zakat Foundation of America's field teams, working alongside local education authorities, have spent recent weeks turning that ground in Khan Younis into a place for 1,200 children to run toward their learning. On the outside of each tent, artwork is going up: bright, simple, deliberately childlike, so that the first thing a student sees isn't canvas and dust, but color. 

There is something almost ordinary about the schedule: staff before students, setup before opening day. But nothing about reaching this point has been ordinary. Every desk in that tent had to be delivered, unloaded, and placed by hand, in a place where even the roads are unstable. 

Before a single child walks in, the teachers will prepare. Next week, they begin a training built for exactly this moment, not a general refresher, but two specific disciplines: 

• Education in Emergencies, which teaches educators how to run a real classroom inside a crisis, not a paused version of one. 

• Orphan-Sensitive Pedagogy, which prepares them for what many of their students will carry into the room with them: grief, fear, the particular quiet of a child who has lost someone. 

A teacher who understands both isn't just delivering a lesson. They're often the first adult a child has trusted in a very long time. 

Across Gaza, hundreds of temporary learning spaces have opened wherever humanitarian partners could manage and still demand outpaces what exists. Every classroom like this one is one fewer child added to that gap. 

Your gift today can help a child in Gaza walk into a classroom this September, not a tent of despair, but a tent of possibility.