Sponsor a Student for $13 a Month! Olive Land School is starting their 2nd Year and DOUBLING in size!
Last year this community helped launch the most important initiative ever founded by the residents of Ard Al Zaytoon Camp. What started as a handful of teachers restoring the youth of the camps RIGHT to education in 3 small tents rapidly evolved into the ONLY free public school in the area.
In November 2025, Principal Elham El-Khateeb, was able to exceed local standards and secure accreditation by the Gaza Ministry of Education and expand access to the broader community. The school instantly grew to 350 scholars. By the beginning of 2026, enrollment would officially reach capacity at 650 students with a dozen educators returning to their mission educating the youth from 21 different displacement camps. Many children walk MILES on foot to attend as they cannot afford or access the options in their area.
Over this summer, you’ve helped the school relocate 600 feet down the block to expand from 5 to 9 tents and from 650 to 1,200 scholars. As they prepare to start the new school year, we must ensure their basic monthly maintenance is secured as well as key infrastructure investment (estimated $20K) - with the current priority being a solar system as they can no longer reach the one at camp and are borrowing access from generous community partners.
Last year, the school cost $8,000 a month for basic necessities serving 650 scholars supported by 13 volunteers. Monthly maintenance includes: volunteer stipends, supplies, daily biscuits, WiFi, land rent etc but does not include ANY one time infrastructure improvements. This cost breaks down to $13 (rounding up from $12.30) per student per month. In Gaza, it is standard that children pay a fee to attend school and this covers those costs. Unfortunately, most families cannot meet this requirement. Multiple nonprofits who partner with the school have offered to remove the financial burden of monthly maintenance from this community (which would allow for more impactful infrastructure improvements) but would require the school assimilate to the local standard by charging each student a small monthly fee.
While crowdfunding for Gaza is at a historic low, and OOB is no exception, this school was built in solidarity with these teachers to support the most vulnerable demographics. The school administration and the OOB Board are unified that this was an intentional initiative to restore the right of education to the youth for free. No OOB beneficiary through any OOB initiative has ever paid any fee and it certainly will not begin with these children. These offers will not be considered until and unless we absolutely fail to secure the funding.
So we implore anyone who is able to become a monthly sponsor of even one of these children at $13 a month to make that commitment now. Everything is on fire and we know that not everyone is able to financially support at this time so please believe us that taking this advocacy offline and informing your friends, relatives and colleagues of this school you’ve been supporting since it was 3 tiny tents flooded as the winter raged is EVERYTHING. If you can activate other supporters individually or as teams, share videos directly from the school on IG (@OliveLandSchool) with EVERYONE you know. We hope to see more teachers in public and active solidarity with these teachers, universities launching OOB chapters or hosting actions and fundraisers, sticker bombing the resources in our “digital assets folder” from the spreadsheet, recruiting any book clubs, mom groups, youth groups, anyone who understands that: “The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe; and I am beginning to suspect that whoever is incapable of recognizing this may be incapable of morality.” - James Baldwin
Finally, please follow the links below so you can see your impact!
Links:
OOB IG: https://www.instagram.com/operationolivebranch
OOB Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@operationolivebranch
Camp Ard Al Zaytoon IG: https://www.instagram.com/campoliveland
Ard Al Zaytoon School IG: https://www.instagram.com/olivelandschool
OOB LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/opolivebranch
OOB Twitter/X: https://x.com/opolivebranch_
OOB YouTube: https://youtube.com/@opolivebranch
