Rital presses her thumbs into a piece of clay until it begins to look like a flower. As the fourteen-year-old shapes each petal, the noise of the emergency shelter fades for a moment. She smiles with her friends around a small table, an UNRWA counsellor guiding them as they mould and paint, forgetting the horrors of more than two years of war.
“I love drawing and shaping flowers from clay,” Rital says. “We sit together and talk about the things we love. We draw, we shape the clay, we colour it, we laugh. Those are the best moments of my day.”
Although a fragile ceasefire has brought a pause to much of the fighting, Rital and her family are still living inside UNRWA’s emergency shelter in the Gaza Strip’s Nuseirat area. Playing with the clay gives her a brief sense of normalcy.
When the war began, Rital was in sixth grade. Today, she should be in eighth. But like the other 660,000 school-age children in the Gaza Strip, Rital’s childhood has been shaped by grief, repeated displacement and continued disruption to schooling.
Since the war started, the European Union (EU), through the European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), has provided a total of €6.4 million to support UNRWA in providing mental health and psychosocial support services for children like Rital, whose lives have been forever changed by war.
Across the Gaza Strip, UNRWA counsellors sit with children, not asking them to recount violence or loss, but inviting them to play, draw, and talk at their own pace. The EU-funded initiative aims to reach over 215,000 children by May 2026.
Through these art-based expression activities implemented across UNRWA shelters and Temporary Learning Spaces, children like Rital and her friends can process fear and regain a sense of a normal childhood.
“For two years too long, children like Rital have known more about rubble than play,” says Sam Rose, Acting Director of UNRWA Affairs in the Gaza Strip. “The EU’s generous contribution goes directly to UNRWA counsellors working in shelters as well as learning spaces that are running structured psychosocial sessions. The funds also go to simple materials that will allow Rital and thousands of other distressed children to begin to address the deep psychological impact of the war.”
These services do not undo harm caused by war, but for Rital and her friends, moulding clay around the table helps restore routine and support their ability to function and learn. Rital is dreaming again. “I want to become a school counsellor when I grow up, I see how the counsellor here helps us every day,” she says. With the EU’s continued support, Rital can continue to mould not only her clay flower but also her hopes for a better future.
