Being homeless for so long was really depressing and stressful, said Ayeasha, 47 and from London. For the first couple of years, I didn't realise how much it was affecting my son. Now 14, Ayeasha's son spent 12 years of his life across five different temporary accommodation properties. Many of these were riddled with disrepair, the mother said, with the ceiling collapsing in one.
Now I live with on-going symptoms that stop me from doing the things that most teenagers can, I often feel left out because my friends have moved on and I can't keep up. Too often children like me have felt abandoned and failed, our struggles minimised and ignored, I want people to understand how much this has affected young people too... and children like me won't be overlooked in the future.
I had just started teaching at a school in the Bekaa valley when war broke out in September 2024. Within days, an Israeli bomb tore through my family home. One minute we were eating lunch, the next the walls were collapsing around us and on to my car outside. I had spent three years saving for that Honda Civic, so when I saw it destroyed, I broke down in tears.
One founder who has built a billion-dollar company told me he doesn't see value in a liberal arts education and has 'yet to meet people that consistently rave about that as being super useful.'