Since the current war began on October 7th, 2023, over 85,000 tonnes of explosives have been dropped on Gaza (Environmental Quality Authority of Palestine, 2024). The scale of destruction is staggering: neighborhoods flattened, schools and universities damaged or destroyed, hospitals overwhelmed. Yet the most enduring consequences may be those carried invisibly — in the minds and bodies of children growing up under relentless bombardment.
Children have borne an acute and disproportionate burden of this violence. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (November 2024), those killed include 710 babies, 1,793 toddlers, 1,205 preschool-aged children, 4,205 primary school students, and 3,442 high school students. Beyond those killed, approximately 17,000 children have lost one or both parents (UNICEF 2024). Many thousands more have been displaced repeatedly, injured, separated from extended family, or forced to navigate daily life amid fear, hunger, and uncertainty.
For children living through sustained aerial bombardment and displacement, trauma is not a single event but a cumulative condition. Research from conflict-affected contexts consistently shows that prolonged exposure to violence increases risks of depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress. Toxic stress can disrupt sleep, impair concentration, affect memory formation, and reshape how children interpret safety and threat. Without structured psychosocial support, these impacts can reverberate across years, influencing educational trajectories, relationships, and long-term well-being.
Psychosocial programming, including structured art therapy, offers one of the few protective spaces available in such conditions. Creative expression provides a language for experiences that often feel unspeakable. Through drawing and painting, children externalize fear and grief, transforming overwhelming emotions into images they can see, share, and gradually process. Group workshops rebuild peer connection and restore small routines of predictability — critical anchors in environments defined by instability. Even modest interventions can reduce trauma symptoms, strengthen resilience, and reintroduce moments of agency and imagination.
As one small but meaningful step in supporting children enduring this catastrophe, Voices is proud to partner with local artist Basel El Maqosui, who organizes informal art workshops for displaced and traumatized youth. Working in shelters and temporary spaces, Basel creates environments where color interrupts grayness and creativity interrupts despair.
Children paint the homes they remember, the futures they hope for, and the emotions they struggle to articulate. These workshops are modest in resources yet profound in significance. They affirm dignity. They affirm presence. They affirm that even amid devastation, children remain creators, storytellers, and participants in their own healing. For more information, follow @basel_elmaqosui