Leadership scholarships in doubt owing to Gaza destruction

The benefits of education are manifold. Even in conflict situations it is possible for education to continue. Education can promote human rights and can provide a form of recovery in the face of trauma and other psycho-social impacts of war.

The Education Above All Foundation programme’s Al Fakhoora scholarships, which aim to educate people from disadvantaged backgrounds and turn students into community leaders, have shown this to be true in countries such as Iraq, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon.

However, the implementation of these scholarships in Gaza is now far from certain because five out of six universities in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed.

Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairperson of Qatar’s Education Above All Foundation, this week pointed to the impact of the war on the programme.

“For more than 20 years we have supported education in Palestine, and especially in Gaza. We built the Al Fakhoora School as the first of many educational projects in Gaza. It has since been shelled by the Israeli Forces,” she said during the opening of the Qatar Foundation WISE 11 conference in Doha.

“The projects, which now constitute the Al Fakhoora programme include teaching and training, building schools and universities, and funding specific research projects that are not available elsewhere in the strip. They also provide psycho-social support to cope with the devastating reality of life in times of crisis in Gaza.

“Since the start of the current Israeli aggression in October, 36 Education Above All-supported schools and universities have been completely or partially destroyed. And so, Israeli forces have destroyed so much that has been accomplished by the Al Fakhoora programme,” she said.

Another pillar lost

“With the collapse of each school and each university, we lose a pillar in the foundation of the future. For every child deprived of education because of violence, another pillar is lost. Every time education is targeted, the international community takes more than a single step backwards. Our priority and policy must transcend political calculations and machinations,” she said at the conference on the theme of ‘Education in the era of Artificial Intelligence’.

A spokesperson for Education Above All told University World News: “In the current Gaza conflict, tragically, six Al Fakhoora graduates have lost their lives. Most universities and schools in Gaza have been seriously affected and continue to be affected with the war continuing as of today.”

The Al Fakhoora Qatar Scholarship Programme has provided a total of 9,800 scholarships upto and including 2023. However, the Gaza Scholarship programme ended last year in June 2022. The Education Above All Foundation said it is currently in discussions to renew the programme in Gaza.

The Al Fakhoora programme, specifically for the State of Palestine, includes advocacy and leadership training, internships and other activities that help scholarship-holders to support their families.

The US$28.6 million programme, funded by Education Above All and the Islamic Development Bank, has as its goal to enable educated, civic minded leaders to become community and national leaders. It is aimed at school leavers of underserved backgrounds, teaching them resilience alongside academic success, as well as emotional and mental wellbeing. To date, it has granted 1,000 scholarships in Gaza, and 389 scholarships in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A story of healing

Athar Ahmed, who benefitted from an Al Fakhoora scholarship, lost her father and uncle in the 2014 Gaza conflict. As she put it: “Hope found me in the form of a scholarship”.

She told the conference: “I’m not just a survivor. I am also a voice from Gaza. And a testament to the resilience that education can cultivate, even in the harshest of circumstances.”

Ahmed said her scholarship “transformed” her educational experience through immediate emotional, psychological and financial support.

“For me, it was not just the financial support and transformative journey, but the focus on personal development, leadership skills, and community engagement. The programme is tied to the belief that education can work as a powerful catalyst for change,” she said.

“As we witness the ongoing tragedy in Gaza, we must recognise the importance of protecting education at all costs,” she told the conference. “It’s not just a university, a classroom or diploma, it is a beacon of hope, a path to a better future.”

Ahmed later told University World News that she had just completed her schooling in Gaza when she heard about the scholarship from friends and former students who had benefitted from it. ”They were talking about how the scholarship gave them another perspective on life and hope for completing their journeys,” she said.

“After the (2014) war, I was just very depressed. I did not want to talk with anyone or socialise. But the scholarship shifted everything for me. They worked a lot on our skills, and on engaging with the community on many activities.

“We conducted several initiatives, and held the first conference in Palestine that was conducted entirely by the youth. So, they trust in us to do these things and to make some difference in our community,” she said.

Impact on the family and wider community

The scholarship, awarded to Ahmed in 2015, enabled her to attend the Islamic University of Gaza, where she graduated in English Literature in 2019 from the Faculty of Arts.

It was a huge relief to Ahmed’s mother who had to support four children. But more than finances, “she was very happy because she noticed the transformation in my character. I was keeping myself away from everything, and now I was in the middle of everything in Gaza, in the middle of the community, the society and this made her feel very proud”, Ahmed said.

“They taught us how education can affect and touch lives. And they taught us the skills of the real world,” she said. Even former scholarship holders who went abroad for masters degrees and other studies returned to Gaza to pass on what they had learned,” she said.

“I believe that every student in Gaza deserves to have some of the knowledge and skills that we have. So I try – even if it is not professionally or supported by anyone else – to help students, for example, with the work environment and career skills, career opportunities, and help them to learn about freelancing and how to get jobs,” she said.

That was how “that shy girl who was depressed and affected by [a] traumatic experience was transformed into a woman able to have an impact on the lives of the people around her”, she said.

But the outlook is grim for current students.

“The war rages on, for more than 50 days now. The university where I studied was bombed. I don’t know how students can complete their education. My own sister is studying at the Islamic University of Gaza, and she’s terrified, feeling lost, because they-she doesn’t know if the university will open again, or if she will complete her education or will lose two years (of education),” said Ahmed.

“Students lost their lives, lost loved ones, teachers lost their lives. It will be difficult to reopen the educational year again,” she said.

Ahmed said Gaza had experienced several wars, “but this is the most brutal one”.

She explained: “In 2014, it was also 50 days, but it was not as brutal as this. We lost 2,000 people [in Gaza] at that time, and we thought nothing could be worse. But this war exceeded that 100 times.

“Even if they have a ceasefire now, the war will continue in our minds and our hearts and the hearts of the ones who have lost loved ones while they are struggling to rebuild their shattered lives. My family was still recovering from the last war when this war started. It’s a cycle of trauma, a cycle of violence.”

A powerful opportunity

Randa Al Dawoudi, who lost her mother while she was still in high school, recalls that the application for the Al Fakhoora scholarship was unlike any other.

“The application itself was so powerful. Questions were, like, talk about yourself in a leadership position. At age 17, I was just finishing high school,” she told University World News.

“I really wanted the scholarship, and to start from scratch. The thing that was different for me about the scholarship was its focus on youth empowerment. It was not just about financial development or financial support. It was about, for example, how you can deal with difficulties, how you can accept things in your life that you are not accepting,” she said.

Al Dawoudi said that this was “absolutely needed”, because the situation in Gaza was “very hard and most people don’t know how to take care of themselves psychologically”.

Al Dawoudi, who studied English in the Education Faculty at the University of Palestine, graduated in 2020 and is currently finishing a master’s degree in marketing management and doing a PhD in international marketing. “Al Fakhoora starts a journey, but that journey has to keep on going,” she said.

Al Dawoudi said during her childhood her parents had books all over the house and the family discussed a book each week together. When she received the scholarship she started a book club in Gaza, which eventually became the biggest book club in the strip. She said she had no funds to help young people in Gaza with transportation or anything. “Yet many people wanted to join the book club,” she said.

Those efforts were thanks to Al Fakhoora. “Being with Al Fakhoora, you get to know so many people in the Gaza Strip in different places … I do believe that it’s about the network. Socialising with people means that you get to know other cultures, not just other people. You become open-minded,” she said.