![Damage at the Shejayia School]()
Damage at the Shejayia School
We have a lot of updates about our work providing clean water in Gaza, all made possible with your support! Here is an overview of what we have been up to plus some photos and stories from our project coordinator in Gaza during her visit to the schools where we installed water purification and desalination units.
Since 2009, MECA has installed water purification and desalination units in 26 UNRWA schools and 26 community kindergartens throughout Gaza. MECA’s new water engineer, Safaa El-Derawi, was able to visit most of the schools in the early weeks of the attacks to check on the units and test the water quality. Since the ceasefire, Safaa has been visiting all the schools to examine the units and make arrangements for repairs.
At the beginning of the Israeli bombing, 16 of our Maia units were providing clean, safe drinking water for displaced families that sought shelter in UNRWA schools. Some of these units stopped working a few weeks later due to the bombing of Gaza’s only electricity plant, direct damage from shelling, or overuse. At that point the water tanks MECA installed were used to store clean drinking water when it was delivered to the shelters. MECA also provided funds to our partner, Afaq Jadeeda Association to distribute water from their own Maia unit to families at shelters in the nearby refugee camps.
Three of the schools where we have water units are still serving as emergency shelters. These units are under repair. In the meantime, the schools are using our tanks and filling them with purified water delivered daily.
One school was very badly damaged during the massacre in Shejayia neighborhood and the water network in the area was also destroyed. We will finish repairs of the unit once the water network is repaired.
The remaining 22 water purification units at UNRWA schools have all been repaired and undergone routine maintenance and they are providing clean drinking water for schoolchildren daily. Some of these units were damaged by Israeli shelling or the pumps were destroyed by the irregular power currents after Israel bombed the only power station in Gaza.
We are still completing the site visits and evaluation of all the kindergartens where we have water purification units. Some of these kindergartens are in areas so severely devastated that our staff could not reach them by road even weeks after the ceasefire was in place.
The following are some first-hand accounts of the visits to schools where MECA installed water purification and desalination units by Safaa El-Derawi
We are now living the real tragedy. The shelling is over but not the destruction and homelessness. Sadness and pain are everywhere in Gaza.
Jabalia Girls Elementary School:
I traveled north from my home in Nuseirat Refugee Camp to check on the MECA water purification and desalination unit at Jabalia Girls Elementary School. I expected to find the unit destroyed since I knew the school was bombed during the aggression on Gaza. But I was surprised to find that the unit was still intact.
Mr. Abu Yousef, who works as a services employee at the school, told me "Thousands of families sought safety at the school in the early days of the attack and the MECA unit was providing them with part of their need for clean drinking water. After the power station was bombed there were power outages all over the Gaza Strip and the water unit stopped working. We stayed without water for two days and then we had to separate the storage tanks from the purification unit to be filled with water provided by the UN."
Though the school year started weeks ago in Gaza, this school is still serving as a shelter for displaced families. I met a young girl named Islam who is nine years old and lives with her family at the school. She described what happened with her family during the attacks:
"We lived in the eastern part of Jabalia village and we were asleep when the Israeli shells fell on our house. I was very scared and cried a lot. My father carried me and my little sister and outside. All the neighbors were screaming and fleeing from the shells. My mother and neighbors raised white flags in order to stop the bombing, but it didn’t stop. I saw the children and adults on the ground lying in blood. We came to this school for shelter, but then it was also bombed and we fled to the street.
After the ceasefire, we went back to our house and we did not find it. We did not find anything, not even my clothes and my toys. I wish to return to our house and go to school and play with the kids like I used to. "
Shejayia Co-ed Elementary School
I went to Shejayia neighborhood during one of the humanitarian ceasefires this summer and was shocked by the large destruction and the smell of death everywhere. The destruction was so massive that I could not reach the school where MECA installed a water purification unit because of the rubble in the roads.
I returned after the end of the aggression. Everything about my visit there made me sad. In the past, the overcrowding in the neighborhood used to make it difficult for me to access the school. But this time the empty streets troubled me. No noise. No congestion. No life. Only destruction and rubble.
I arrived to school and found it had been largely destroyed due to indiscriminate shelling during the Shejayia massacre. Mr. Abu Raed Amasi works at the school and told me that they collected all the broken pieces of the water purification unit. He hopes that we can repair the unit to be used after the restoration of the school and I promised we would.
Beit Hanoun Boys Prepatory School
I visited Beit Hanoun after the end of the Israeli attacks and met Zainab, mother of two, who was taking shelter at the school. Zainab explained what happened to her family. She said: "We escaped from the Israeli bombing which destroyed our house and our land and we came to the school. At first we slept on the ground and there was no water, no food. Now they give us food and water to drink and we have blankets. But every day I need to treat my children. Diseases have spread here and we cannot do anything. We do not know what our future is!!"
![Displaced families at Jabalia School]()
Displaced families at Jabalia School
![More damage Shejayia School]()
More damage Shejayia School
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