Education on an empty stomach
Palestinians receive food aid distributed by UNRWA in Gaza City 29 September 2020
Ruwaida Amer reports in The Electronic Intifada:
Khitam Salim struggles to provide her children with packed lunches. A mother of three, she has been a single parent since her husband died from leukemia four years ago. Her children attend a primary school in Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Run by the UN agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), the school does not provide its students with meals so they have to bring sandwiches or buy food from a canteen.
To buy food, the children would need more than $1 per day. Their mother cannot afford that amount. “No one helps me,” Salim – who is unemployed and depends on social assistance – said. “The conditions in which we find ourselves are very hard. The children see some of their classmates buying things during the break. Not being able to buy anything themselves has a bad effect on them psychologically.”
Faris Qishta has five children, all of whom attend UNRWA schools. He needs money to buy uniforms, as well as food for his children. “I cannot do all this,” he said. If it wasn’t for food aid packages he receives, “my family would have died of hunger,” he said. The aid, however, does not include meals at school.
Formerly a taxi driver, Qishta is now jobless. “I am always looking for work, even for a few shekels, in order to meet my children’s simplest needs,” he said. “But I cannot find anything. My children have many dreams and when they come to tell me about them, I feel sad. I don’t know if their future will be better or if it will be like it is at the moment.”
UNRWA oversees a network of 288 schools in Gaza, catering to almost 300,000 students.
No breakfast
Thousands of these children go to school without breakfast and without having money for food during the day. As they lack proper nutrition, many children cannot concentrate properly on their lessons.
UNRWA used to run a free meal scheme in its schools. Because of budgetary constraints, the general school-feeding program was halted in 2014. As a result, the agency now only gives free meals in particular cases.
Since 2014, UNRWA has been forced to cut spending amid a major funding crisis.