From Soldiers to Scholars 

*Sanya was born in a village, where childhood ends before it begins. By age seven, she could already identify the sound of different weapons and knew which parts of the jungle were safe to hide in. Her parents, like others in the village, spent their days coaxing crops from storm-ravaged soil or descending into makeshift mines. Their faces were almost always streaked with dirt and worry. 

The children in that village were never really children. They were small survivors; their dreams as confined as the spaces they called home. When asked what they wanted to be, they would echo the only answer they knew: “A soldier.” It wasn’t a dream – it was surrender to inevitability. 

The parents carried their own wounds. *Sunisa, a mother of three, remembers the day she told her eldest son not to waste time with books. “What good is reading,” she had said, “when your stomach is empty?” The heavy monsoons had destroyed their crops again, and education seemed like a luxury they couldn’t afford to want. 

This village had a school when the Lord directed us there. It was a modest building where children learned and laughed. But teachers come and go like seasons, rarely lasting more than three months in a conflict prone, bare bone poor village. Five teachers, barely older than some of their students, tried to manage eighty children with nothing but worn textbooks and hope. The community couldn’t consistently support their salaries.  

Then the village was bombed. The attack leveled their homes, their school, and their sense of safety. With no choice, the community fled deeper into the jungle, taking refuge in a cave, using only solar lights to illuminate the surroundings. But those too were stolen, along with other precious resources the village had scraped together. 

INfire stepped in to provide monthly allowances for the teachers, school supplies, and “Grab and Go” kits for emergency relief. They also introduced a feeding program with a trusted partner organization, knowing that an empty stomach cannot focus on learning. 

The change wasn’t immediate, but it was profound. Children who once dozed through lessons from hunger began to raise their hands. Their eyes gained focus, their questions grew bolder.  

The challenges are still immense. The school’s curriculum needs recognition, and the understaffed team struggles to keep up with the growing number of students.  

But something has shifted in the village. You can see it in the way parents now walk their children to the cave school. The children still know which parts of the jungle are safe to hide in, but they also know their multiplication tables, can write their names, and can dream beyond survival.  

Like the cave that shelters their classroom, the people of the village have discovered strength in their foundations. Where there was once only space for desperation, hope has carved out room to grow. Love can grow deep and true in hard places. It has more grit than death and suffering.  

The road ahead is long, and parts of it still disappear into shadow. But unlike before, when education seemed like an impossible luxury, the community now walks this path together. Each small victory – a new teacher staying much beyond three months, a child choosing a dream beyond soldiering, a parent contributing to the school instead of discouraging it – lights the way forward. 

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*names changed for privacy and protection