BEIT LAHIA, Gaza Strip — At the age of six, Soha Harez would don her green school uniform, pull her brown hair back in a white hairband and join her classmates every morning in class. Sadly, this routine only lasted a month, because she had to quit school and become a housemaid.
Soha’s father worked sporadically at a cookie factory, earning in the best of times the equivalent of $10 a month. Soha's mother worked as a maid to cover the basic needs of her six children. When her mother was diagnosed with a serious illness, Soha quit school to take over her job. Two years later, a team from the Future Hope Center, a child protection initiative in northern Gaza, knocked on her door and talked her parents into letting Soha take advantage of the center's programs with the hope that she would then continue her education.