Crystal Palace Friends of Palestine are raising vital funds for Hope and Play charity. Their emergency projects work with Palestinian children, mainly in Gaza, and provide them with the basics to survive and glimpses of the childhood that every child deserves. The charity provides education and basic necessities such as food and water as well as play, sports, arts and trauma therapy.

The project we are supporting is the school in Al Aqsa university, Mawasi, Khan Younis.

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The literacy rate in Gaza and the West Bank prior to the start of the genocide stood at 98.1%. Higher than many countries in the West, despite regular school closures imposed by the occupation forces, and travel restrictions and curfews which impede the very logistics of schooling. Under occupation and with limited opportunities available, education is seen as a vital tool of resistance and of creating hope and realising a positive future.

But Gaza's kids have lost out on vital years of education as their schools have been destroyed, and as they've been forced out of their homes with survival itself being a struggle.

Getting back to some formal education is one of the strongest symbols of hope for children, their families and the communities. It represents a resilience, and a recognition of the value of education even when all around them is violence and destruction. There was no stronger testament to this than the picture of hundreds of children waving their graduation certificates in the middle of a completely bombed out neighbourhood at the end of the year in one of the 3 schools we funded last year.

Hope and Play's schools in Gaza are about more than education. The schools mean food and water for children when both are scarce. They also mean routine and engagement in activities that aren't focused on a hellscape of violence and destruction. And the schools also mean opportunities for engagement in art, in culture, and in play