Gaza Blog: Another school year without books
“Fatima” (10 years old) sat on a chair playing with other little children like her in the 4th grade classroom at the SOS Children’s Village School. Shortly after that, the teacher began to hand out copied papers for mathematics instead of the books! The books are at the checkpoints and they are not allowed to enter the Gaza Strip, a problem that almost all schools suffer from. “Fatima” is no longer experiencing the excitement of having new books to take home and being able to spread them on the table and enjoy looking at them.Many schools hand out used copies that are in very bad condition.
At the Children's Village’s School; the teachers gathered around the school's principal, they are worried because because the school’s copy machine had broken down and it needs to be repaired but there are no spare parts in the market because of the siege on Gaza Strip, and there are hundreds of copy machines in other schools that are disabled for the same reason, so, what can they do? What is the alternative? “Use the scanner and print a few copies” these are the instructions from the school's principal, but what will happen when the printer’s ink runs out? And not all schools have scanners, and there has been a shortage in ink in many schools for a long time due to the siege.
School’s uniforms have become rare in Gaza's schools because of the scarcity of fabrics and materials, as well as the increase in prices. All of this has prevented more than 300,000 children from the joy of wearing new school uniforms. But “Fatima” and her classmates in the school do have a new school uniform. After many difficulties, the Children’s Village were able to get the new uniforms for its students this year. The Children at the SOS Children’s Village have become aware of the difficulty of access to educational materials and have become more careful of their possessions.
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