Fueling Gaza’s Future: Education Is the Last Line of Resistance
A call to everyone who understands the value of learning
If there is any place where people understand what education means, it is here. Substack is full of people who think, teach, write, research, and build ideas for a living. People who know what it takes to shape a mind. People who know that education is not just a service. It is a future. It is a lifeline. It is a form of survival.
That is why this is the right place to ask for support for the Gaza Great Minds Foundation.
Education in Gaza is not simply schooling. It is resistance. It is identity. It is how Palestinians protect their culture and their future in the face of a genocide that is trying to erase both.
Israel targeted Gaza’s schools to destroy the next generation
Since October 2023, Israel has bombed nearly every school in Gaza. The destruction is almost total. When you destroy schools, you are not only destroying buildings. You are destroying the next generation of Palestinians. You are cutting into the future of a people.
This is not accidental. It is part of the genocide. It is part of the attempt to break Gaza’s future by breaking its children.
Palestinians have always treated education as something sacred. Even before the war, Palestinians had some of the highest rates of university enrollment in the region. Education has always been a core part of their resistance. It is how they hold on to their history, their dignity, and their identity.
This is why rebuilding education is not optional. It is urgent.
When schools are bombed, Palestinians rebuild them
When schools are bombed, Palestinians rebuild them. Sometimes in tents. Sometimes in rubble. Sometimes with nothing but a whiteboard and a few chairs. Because stopping education is not an option.
Gaza Great Minds Foundation was created by teachers in Gaza who refused to let the war end their students’ futures. They set up tent schools so children could keep learning even while displaced, hungry, and grieving. One of the teachers, Ahmed Abo Rizik, helped establish these schools to give children some semblance of normality in the middle of destruction.
These schools are recognized by the Ministry of Education in Gaza. They do not charge tuition, because no parent in Gaza can afford it. Many teachers work without pay just to keep the schools running.
The foundation currently operates two active schools, serving over 2,000 children who would otherwise have no access to education at all. When funding allows, they also try to provide one meal a day for each child. Sometimes that is the only meal that child will eat. But funding has been short for months, and they rarely reach their monthly target of £10,000, which is the bare minimum needed to keep the schools open.
You can also follow the Gaza Great Minds Foundation on Substack, where teachers post daily updates from the schools. You can see the students, their lessons, their drawings, their joy, and the small moments of normal life they are trying to rebuild.
A Message From Gaza Great Minds: What the School Itself Wants the World to Know
Before anything else, it’s important to hear directly from the people doing this work on the ground. Gaza Great Minds is not simply running classrooms — they are rebuilding the future in real time. Their mission, their scale, and their needs have evolved, and they’ve shared an updated statement that captures exactly what they are facing today.
Here is their message, in full:
📚 Rebuilding the Future: A Call for Strategic Partnership
Education is not just a right; in Gaza, it is a lifeline.
In the midst of unprecedented challenges, the dreams of thousands of children remain steadfast. They aren't just looking for safety; they are looking for a future. Gaza Great Minds is dedicated to ensuring that the next generation does not lose their path, but instead finds a beacon of hope through learning.
Why Your Partnership Matters
We aren’t looking for one-time donors; we are looking for visionary partners. By joining hands with Gaza Great Minds, you are directly investing in the intellectual and psychological resilience of over 2,000 students.
How your contribution creates change:
• Student Wellbeing: Providing critical psychosocial support to help children heal and focus.
• Empowering Educators: Sponsoring teacher incentives to keep the heart of the classroom beating.
• Essential Logistics: Funding the supplies and materials necessary to turn a space into a sanctuary of learning.
The Value of Our Alliance
We believe in a partnership built on trust and mutual growth. As a partner, your organization will receive:
• Global Visibility: Recognition in international media outlets.
• On-Site & Digital Branding: Placement within our centers and featured social media recognition.
• Radical Transparency: Detailed impact reports showing exactly how your support translates into “real numbers and real hope.”
“We are currently operating 2 active schools, serving 2,000+ students. But the need is growing every day.”
Join Us Today
Let’s build a future where every child in Gaza has a book in their hand and a path forward. Education cannot wait, and neither can they.
📩 Become a Strategic Partner: Sponsor@GazaGreatMinds.org
Why education still matters in a genocide
People naturally prioritize food, water, and shelter in a crisis. But Palestinians themselves will tell you that education is not something they put aside. Many would choose education even if it meant cutting back on their own basic needs. That is how deeply it is tied to their identity.
Supporting Gaza Great Minds is not symbolic. It is not charity. It is not a gesture.
It is investing in the future of Gaza.
It is protecting the next generation.
It is refusing to let Israel’s destruction of schools become the destruction of a people.
How you can support
There are two direct ways to help:
1. Donate directly to Gaza Great Minds Foundation
Every pound goes straight to the schools.
Website: GazaGreatMinds.org
Direct donation link: https://donate.stripe.com/8wM9Es8Wb6x810s7sJ
2. Become a paid subscriber at: Gaza Great Minds Foundation
All revenue from paid subscriptions goes directly to the foundation.
This creates stable, predictable monthly support.
A student’s voice
Below is the writing of one of the students at Gaza Great Minds. Her name is Ghazal Alhindy. She is thirteen years old. She has been journaling throughout the genocide.
Her words speak for themselves.
Arranging Chaos
Written by Ghazal Alhindy, a student at our school
She was arranging chaos.
She sat in a house shaking under the sounds of bombardment, holding her pen as if it were a lifeline.
She documented everything, writing the date, recording the details, retelling each moment as though she feared it might be forgotten.
She was not writing only to release her fear; she was writing as if someone would one day read it.
At thirteen, she was supposed to be occupied with school assignments, seventh-grade textbooks, and conversations with her friends.
Instead, she followed the news closely, memorized the names of massacres, and waited for confirmation that her father and brother had survived the Flour Massacre, the way any child waits for reassurance that their family is safe.
She wrote about the moment the occupation forces withdrew from near her home as if it were a new beginning.
She wrote about Hind Rajab, praying that her fate would not be like that of the other children.
She was afraid, but she kept writing, as if writing were her only way to remain steady amid all that fear.
“I am afraid.”
It is the sentence children in Gaza learned too early.
As the days passed, her notebook no longer sounded like a child’s diary.
It began to read like a record.
Not because she wanted to grow up,
but because the war left her no choice.
It stole her school.
It stole her routines.
It stole her childhood.
Even the quiet moments a teenager needs to discover herself,
to sit in silence and ask: Who am I? What do I love? What do I want to become?
What would she be writing about if she felt safe?
Maybe about Gaza’s beach in the summer.
Maybe about a hobby she had just begun to love.
Maybe about her favorite meal from her mother’s hands, instead of writing about hunger.
Maybe she would look at the sky and listen to birds in the morning, instead of counting drones and bullets striking her windows.
She was arranging chaos.
And the chaos never stopped.
But she kept writing.
Why I am asking here
This community understands what education means.
You understand what it means to protect a mind.
You understand what it means to invest in a future.
Gaza’s children deserve that future.
And we have the ability to help protect it.
I appreciate this post, though I can’t say I “like” it. I’m sure you understand …
Great project. I have friends in Gaza in a tent: Two journalists and their broadcasting team plus a lot of children and education gives children a little bit of security. All these children are orphaned with some of them being the only surviving member of large extended families. They need the security, school brings. They are lucky to have Aya and Doaa. It is not talked about much but the cohort of orphaned children is 19,000 now, it is estimated. That is mind twisting. These poor children dont understand what they have done wrong. So I cheer them up and send them kisses and hugs and tell them it is not everyone that hates them. It is only Israel that hate them and hardly anyone else. They have been let down by the politicians the whole world over. It is all so sad. I have supported Palestine from when I was a child because my parents were Quakers and to see this heinous crime of apocalyptic conditions inflicted on defenceless people.
It is the most brutal genocide and the whole world has seen what Israelis are. Zionism is not about religion. Religion is the pretence. They are using religion to justify genocide. They are not jewish. Being jewish is not meant to teach
you, to commit one of the most brutal genocides in history. Some people have that delusion but far more do not. Perhaps it's to do with all that leaning forward and back and forward and back for hours on end. That is the first delusion of many. They are extremists and Israel is a terrorist state that is far more dangerous than the Taliban, ISIS and all large terror groups in the world including Hitler. The Germans did not bomb anywhere as heavily as these fascists have done on a tiny piece of their remaining country, only 8 miles by 24 miles. It was already one of the most densely populated places in the world. Half the population were children. So I suppose creating 19,000 orphans is what you might expect when you drop bunker busters on them or missiles on tents. These rats are seriously gone in their minds. What a cowardly crime. Like shooting fish in a fish tank. They have dropped 6x the explosive power that was dropped on Hiroshima. It is savage over-kill. They didn't need to drop white phosphorous on them, but they could, so they did. They have dropped poisons and bombs that are illegal because too many of them don't explode on impact and remain a threat. Israel needs to be sat down in front of Sesame Street and so desperately in need of some advice from Elmo, teaching them to use their words and not their fists. Yes, they need the muppets!