Bringing people and institutions together to rebuild education in Gaza

80 PLUS is a UK-based non-profit run by volunteers that brings communities and universities together to fund one-year master’s scholarships for students from Gaza. We believe that protecting education is essential to rebuilding Gaza’s future, and that collective action can make it possible.

Our name reflects our model: when 80 people or plus give £30 a month for 12 months, we can fully fund one student’s education. It also stands for Palestine Learning United Scholarships, highlighting our belief in collective responsibility and solidarity through education.

Since 2023, Gaza’s entire Higher Education system has been devastated – all universities severely damaged or destroyed, academics and students killed, and thousands displaced. The extent of the destruction has led United Nations specialists to express grave concern that this pattern of attacks indicates an attempt at the ‘systematic destruction of the Palestinian education system’ (UN, 2024), also referred to as ‘scholasticide’. As opposed to the situation in other conflict zones, this scholasticide has been occurring across historic Palestine for decades, under various guises (Wind, 2024), but has recently intensified in Gaza as part of the current genocide. 

It is against this backdrop that we are launching 80 PLUS to attempt to meet some of the urgent needs for Palestinian students in Gaza to continue their higher education which will enable them to contribute to rebuilding education in Gaza. At the same time, we recognise the equally urgent need to support universities in Gaza to continue to operate in whichever way they can; for this reason, we have also built into our model a mechanism for supporting students currently studying at their home universities in Gaza.