Two schoolgirls sit in a ruined classroom, writing at a desk in front of a peeling chalkboard

CAMPAIGN · LICHT & BILDUNG

Light & Learning

Power and a digital future for Syria’s schools. In darkened classrooms, a generation is waiting for the first light.

They sit down anyway. They keep writing anyway.

The story

A NEW ERA

Syria is waking. Its schools are still waiting for morning.

After the political turning point, a new chapter begins. Yet the education system faces immense logistical barriers. Around one third of all schools are damaged or destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of children are returning from abroad — and finding rooms without power, without warmth, without the means to learn.

Destroyed classroom with overturned desks, looking out through a blown-open wall — The walls have fallen. The desks remain.

1/3

of all schools damaged or destroyed

100,000+

children returning, in need of a place to learn

Winter

dark, unheated rooms — no power, no light

01THE POWER CRISIS

When the only light falls through the ceiling

In the cold winter months, and during afternoon classes, children sit in dark, unheated rooms. Without electricity there is no light, no warmth, and no digital education. A generation is learning in shadow — not because it has given up, but because the grid is silent.

Pupils sit in a classroom where daylight enters through a hole in the destroyed ceiling — No power. No heat. Only a hole in the concrete.

02LANGUAGE & RETURN

Home — and still a stranger to their own books

Many children who grew up abroad speak Syrian dialect, yet cannot read or write the formal Arabic of school textbooks. Teachers urgently need digital tools — projectors, screens, visual language — so that the first step in is possible, and no child is left standing at the threshold.

Children running and playing in front of a heavily damaged school building — They are back. Now they need a room that will hold them.

03SCARS IN THE ROOM

A classroom must not remain a battlefield

Bullet holes in the walls. Destroyed doors. Sanitation out of service. Benches that no longer hold. Before education can become digital, the room itself must be safe, warm and dignified — windows, doors, water, desks. The foundation comes first.

A blue school wall riddled with bullet holes, a woman and child in the background — The war still sits in the paint.

WHAT YOUR DONATION SWITCHES ON

Four ways to bring a classroom back to life.

Entrance gate of a Syrian school under a clear sky

01SOLAR POWER

Electricity that lasts

Photovoltaic systems and batteries supply classrooms sustainably with light and power — independent of the grid, independent of winter.

Classroom with a children’s mural, rubble on the floor and overturned desks

02DIGITAL TEACHING

Lessons you can see

Laptops, projectors and interactive screens make language teaching visual — so returning children can find their way into formal Arabic.

Worn wooden school benches beside an old stove in a bare classroom

03REPAIR

Rooms that hold again

Repair of damaged windows, doors, sanitation and school benches — so learning can take place in a safe room once more.

A splintered classroom door, with a bright room beyond

04MATERIALS & TRAUMA CARE

What a child needs in order to learn

Schoolbags, up-to-date textbooks, and training for teachers in the psychosocial care of traumatised children.

Laughing children running across the courtyard of a damaged school

They are already running. Now we let the light follow.

Among the ruins, a generation is playing that did not wait for us. Every euro you give today does more than put light in a dark classroom. It gives a Syrian child the chance of a self-determined future.

Hope does not need an intact building. It needs us.

"Let us light Syria’s schools together. Donate now."

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