Yasser al-Sanad is the headteacher of al-Najah school and the son of its founder. The school was abandoned in 2011 when the civil war started. Over the past 14 years, it was used by the former regime as an intelligence branch, by the Islamist Group movement as a weapons factory, and by internally displaced people as a place of refuge.
Yasser al-Sanad says:
200 live rounds of ammunition in one day
HI cleared one third of the school, enabling 170 students to return to study. Normally, the school should have a capacity of 700-800 students. The rest of the school should be cleared up by next year.
While sixth graders take a classical Arabic language lesson in one classroom, mine clearance teams shift through ammunition, weapons and military paraphernalia in the adjacent building. One day, a team of five experts cleared 200 live rounds of ammunition, countless bags of military clothing, helmets and ammunition casings from just one school classroom.
A new lease of life thanks to the school reopening
We are so happy to reopen our school. It was built through the efforts of my father. He paid a lot to build it. Reopening it to provide education to our people makes me happy. We are so grateful to HI, because they helped us a lot by removing the huge amounts of weapons from our school. If we clear and reopen the surrounding schools, we will revive the region, and more people will come back, and it will be more active than before.
There is a big change from the beginning until now. In the beginning, the unexploded ordnance was everywhere. All the neighbourhoods were contaminated. If we speak specifically about this street, it was totally contaminated. But with HI's efforts removing this contamination, from the parks to the buildings, people felt a lot happier and safer. And that's very important. We are grateful for their efforts.
NGOs worked hard to raise awareness among the students. Specifically, the younger ones who started school and know nothing about unexploded ordnance. They worked hard teaching about this. They brought posters with them to show them if they see UXO, they have to stay away. And now the situation is getting better.
Hope for the future
I'm optimistic about the future. It will take time, for sure, but we hope it will be safer in the future. I believe that the media plays a major role, telling people that it’s safe to come back.
We need more support from the international community to help our country to reconstruct, to rebuild. We have shortages in all sources of life here. The infrastructure is mostly destroyed. We need more support so we can work more and provide people with more services. The country is destroyed, we need more help and support.
Many families are waiting for these schools to be ready for use. It will be much better for the families living around the neighbourhood, because currently they are sending their children to school further away.
