Say Yes, Spring 2005: Building Upon Success

Haydi Kızlar Okula! the campaign to close the gender gap in primary education in Turkey expanded to twenty more provinces this Spring, bringing the total number of project provinces to fifty-three. A great deal has been achieved, many lessons have been learned and much experience has been accumulated since the campaign was launched in June 2003 by the Minister of National Education, Dr Hüseyin Çelik and former UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy.

UNICEF’s latest Progress for Children report warns that Turkey is not fully on course to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of gender parity in education by 2015.

However, the report notes that girls’ enrolment has risen significantly in recent years and that Turkey is on the right track if the projected increase in the Gender Parity Index (GPI) is achieved. The target for 2005 is to increase the GPI from the 2001 rate of 0.93 to 0.96.

The warning is a timely challenge as Haydi Kızlar Okula! gathers momentum for its latest drive. It is expected that the solid base of support amongst government, the media, the private sector, communities and families alike will consolidate the achievements of the past two years and build upon them to ensure that the gender parity goal is met.

A new confidence

Apart from the addition of the new provinces, Haydi Kızlar Okula! maintains exactly the same structure and strategy that has worked well in previous years. This includes:

• intense canvassing of districts and neighbourhoods where the numbers of girls out of school are highest;
• house-to-house visits by volunteer advocates to convince parents of the value of girls’ education;
• mobilisation of national and local leaders and mass media in support of the campaign.

During the past year, 100,000 people were trained in advocacy techniques. This might explain the new air of confidence at the training session for project coordinators in late Spring. Making presentations for the benefit of their new colleagues, experienced project coordinators demonstrated a range of innovative responses which they had tailored to their local needs.

Mobilisation of school principals was the focus in Van, while Manisa and Gaziantep focused on mobilising the voluntary sector. İstanbul relied on advocacy and media support and Adıyaman developed a special software to monitor girls who are out of school. The software will be shared with other participating provinces.

Participants were so energised by proceedings that they instantly wanted to field test some of the techniques in the nearby town of Nevşehir.

Government Initiatives

Taking into account many of the recurring issues that make parents resistant to sending their daughters to school, the government has introduced several measures designed to encourage poorer families to enroll their girls.

An amnesty for late birth registration will remove the usual fine of $13 which can be daunting to the poorest families. Although it is not a direct barrier to primary school enrolment, children often remain unregistered -- and hard to keep track of -- as a result.

With UNICEF support, MONE is piloting a school mapping programme in the provinces of Diyarbakır and Şanliurfa -- two of the original project provinces -- which will pinpoint the areas where classrooms are most needed.

This year enrolment will commence in June, (August is the traditional month to begin enrolment) in order to allow more time to identify children who are not enrolled and create a window of opportunity to find the best solution to their situation. This will also permit a more timely statistical overview of progress in enrolment.

The Minister of the Interior has prioritised girls’ enrolment and the Ministries of Health and Labour have circularised all provincial directorates with instructions to support the campaign’s objectives.

Other Initiatives

NGOs such as the Willows Foundation have proven to be a formidable resource. Working in a strong team environment, the Willows’ systematic approach led to the enrolment of 9,000 girls following visits to more than 120,000 homes by only 150 volunteers in Autumn 2004.

The Mother and Child Training Foundation (AÇEV) have obtained funding from the EU to support an education initiative for illiterate women and girls of primary school age in İstanbul, Şanliurfa, Diyarbakır and Mardin. AÇEV will run the project in conjunction with two other NGOs -- the Education Reform Initiative and the Association for the Education and Support of Women (KA-DER).

The support of the media throughout the campaign has proven to be an invaluable resource -- but not just for Haydi Kızlar Okula! Television channels and newspapers have been supportive of other nationwide education initiatives and in some cases the media have generated their own campaigns.

At the launch of the Progress for Children report for the CEE/CIS Region in İstanbul this May, UNICEF Regional Director Maria Calivis commended Milliyet newspaper for it’s ‘Daddy Send Me to School Campaign’. The newspaper’s initiative is the perfect complement to MONE’s advocacy of girls’ education. Calivis noted that the emphasis on ‘Daddy’ was a particularly appropriate choice for Turkey.

Since the establishment of the Republic, Turkey has been seeking to make quality education for all the norm and the flourishing culture of public awareness on the issue shows that this is about to happen. All credit goes to the teachers, imams, muhtars, volunteers and of course the parents and children themselves who have taken the message of Haydi Kızlar Okula! to their hearts and helped bring the issue of girls’ education to every household in the country.

Read a more about the Progress for Children report in the Press Centre.

The Turkish version of the report can be read online or downloaded in pdf format from UNICEF Turkey. [PDF 1MB]

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