Less Fearful, More Active: Back To School
Students at Seğmenler Primary School near Gölcük.
Photograph by Rana Mullan © UNICEF Turkey 2001
While the traditional health and mental health services are crucial providers of specialised services to children and adults in general, for children traumatised by catastrophic events, the ability to attend school, under the guidance and supervision of a teacher and in the company of their classmates, is fundamental to regaining the all-important sense of normality: the daily routines and studies at school are a refuge in a world deranged by uncertainty, a reference for lack of other reassurances.
Acting on the findings of the field mission, UNICEF initiated an emergency response programme with four main components; Health and Nutrition; Water and Environmental Sanitation; Education and the Psycho-social School Project. MONE had plans for a psycho-social school programme of their own at the time, immediately established a close relationship with UNICEF for the development and implementation of the fourth component.
| Province | Number of teachers who left |
|---|---|
| Bolu & Düzce | 368 |
| Bursa | 124 |
| Eskişehir | 68 |
| İstanbul (Avcılar & Bağcılar) | 609 |
| Kocaeli | 1,664 |
| Sakarya | 1,096 |
| Yalova | 431 |
| Total | 4,360 |
Twenty-five per cent of teachers had left the area and although many newly qualified staff replaced them, nearly thirteen hundred positions remained vacant, the staffing requirement of a hundred schools catering to almost fifty thousand children. Initial activities reached out to the families of those teachers who remained. Having suffered also, they would clearly be the first priority in the minds of the teachers themselves. This point was expressed by professional partners and project consultants and by MONE itself, the rationale being that in order for teachers to concentrate on school activities, they and their families would of necessity have to feel secure. At the same time, the most affected children would be reached in the tent camps through complementary activities.
The tremors had wrought havoc on school buildings: of a thousand primary schools in the region, half of them had either collapsed or sustained major damage. A hundred school buildings were completely destroyed and a thousand five hundred were damaged. MONE estimated the damage at US$125million.
With frequent aftershocks, fear and apprehension persisted among the traumatised populace. Many mothers refused to allow their children to enter a building. In many cases, the children themselves refused to go.
Immediately following the first disaster, UNICEF airlifted forty standard educational or school-in-a-bag kits from the Supply Division in Copenhagen. Supplied in duffel bags or boxes, the kits can equip a class of forty children with all the basic materials required to run full educational activities. UNICEF followed up by canvassing local manufacturers to assemble a basic primary school kit and a recreational kit for pre-schools. The benefits were enormous: UNICEF procured and distributed over twenty thousand pallets which served a total schooling space for nearly fifty thousand children on a triple shift system.
Turkey does not have many special needs schools as the occurrence has yet to be accepted as a normal, if sporadic, event. The existing centres had suffered damage in proportion to the school infrastructure, however, and as the special needs schools were rehabilitated through the dedication of the teaching staff, counsellors and family members of the children, UNICEF provided twenty-five centres with materials and equipment in the form of a special needs kit containing recreational toys and equipment for motor co-ordination enhancement exercises and cognitive skill development as well as trampolines, ball pits, balance boards, sand bags, swings, building blocks, play dough, construction paper and paints.
The fully illustrated text of Less Fearful, More Active is also available for download in print-ready pdf format. [PDF 1.25MB]
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