- Maysa Yousef and other artists in the territory transform plain, aid-agency backpacks into personalized art for students returning to school after years of disruptions
- About 541,000 students returned to classrooms in Gaza last month, despite challenges posed by destroyed buildings and ongoing insecurity
LONDON: As children in the Gaza Strip return to school following nearly three years of educational disruption, they are bringing their plain, light-blue backpacks—distributed by aid agencies—to artist Maysa Yousef to transform into personalized items reflecting their dreams and interests. Children request specific designs ranging from rocket ships to princesses and horses.
When Yousef hands back the decorated bags, the children leave smiling and hugging them tightly. “I’m trying to make children happy and make them feel that their schoolbags are beautiful,” Yousef, an artist in central Gaza, told Arab News. “When giving a schoolbag to a child, the least you could do is print a balloon on it.”
Over the past two weeks, Yousef has decorated nearly 30 backpacks using her limited supply of paint. Her efforts come as students across the conflict-affected Palestinian enclave return to classrooms following years of interrupted education. Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, which began in October 2023 after Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, devastated much of the territory’s education system.
The local education authority reports approximately 541,000 students returned to school last month. However, many children face the challenge of attending school amid destroyed buildings, repeated displacements, and ongoing insecurity.
Yousef joins several artists across Gaza who are transforming plain, mass-distributed aid backpacks into meaningful items children can call their own.
In the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of northern Gaza, 21-year-old artist Sara Zakout has also been painting colorful designs on schoolbags, sharing images of her work on Instagram to showcase how standard bags become canvases for personalized imagery.
While the gesture may seem modest compared to the extensive destruction in Gaza, painted designs of horses, princesses, or rocket ships restore a sense of childhood wonder for children carrying bags associated with displacement and aid.
Rim Ajjour, a child psychologist in Lebanon, emphasizes that such personalization of children’s belongings transcends superficiality in crisis situations. “It highlights the importance of identity, agency, creativity and even being able to live a normal childhood,” she explained. “While needs like food, shelter, and protection are urgent, children still require opportunities for play, self-expression, and a sense of belonging.”
Ajjour notes that personalized bags offer children a sense of ownership at a time when much else has been lost. “Having something they can call their own, something they can personalize, is extremely important in this particular situation because it may compensate for some of the loss they have experienced,” she added.
In Gaza, children have endured widespread loss, separation, and displacement. According to UN figures, over 58,000 children have lost one or both parents during the conflict, and UNICEF estimates at least 17,000 are now unaccompanied or separated from their families. More than 1.9 million Palestinians have been displaced within Gaza, with over 1.2 million people—over half the population—having lost their homes. Children account for about half of the nearly 2 million people forced to seek shelter elsewhere in the territory.
“So little is left that is their own, that is personal,” Ajjour said. “Having something they can personalize is extremely important because it may compensate for some of the loss they have experienced.”
The backpack project operates under significant resource constraints. “There are no painting materials in the Gaza Strip,” Yousef noted. “Acrylic colors are very poor quality. I used the colors that survived the war in order to carry out this initiative.”
Families bring bags when possible, and Yousef returns them quickly to the children. The painted bags provide an affordable alternative to expensive commercial products, which remain out of reach for many parents due to high costs.
“Children ask for a bag with Spider-Man or something else on it,” Yousef said. “While there are nice bags and stationery in the market, everything is expensive, so parents cannot buy them for their children.”
Despite ongoing offers of support, the scarcity and poor quality of available art supplies remain challenges. However, the children’s joy sustains her efforts. “Honestly, the children’s reactions were very touching,” she said. “When they saw the bag with the design they loved, they would hug it tightly and leave. It was very beautiful.”
Yousef has also begun hosting backpack-painting workshops, allowing children to create their own designs. Before the war, she focused on bringing art to everyday objects, painting on items like T-shirts, bags, and phone covers rather than creating gallery-only works.
“I wanted to make beautiful things; not only paintings to hang on a wall, but objects people could use in their lives while still being decorated with colors,” she explained. Now, in a place where school presence itself is uncertain, her functional art approach has taken on renewed significance. “I found that schoolbags were an opportunity to bring back those lovely memories from before,” Yousef added.