Say Yes, Spring 2005: Voices of Experience (1)

As Haydi Kızlar Okula! enters its third phase this Spring with the addition of the last twenty project provinces, coordinators and trainers from provinces where the campaign has already been active were invited to share their experiences with their new colleagues at this years training session in Nevşehir. Some of them spoke to Say Yes about their achievements to date.

Our work has been just like this throughout the campaign: locating children who are out of school, looking into their situations and finding solutions.
Photograph by Rana Mullan
© UNICEF Turkey 2005

Nevzat Hüseyin Yetkin
School Principal, Adıyaman

During our outreach work in one of the poorer areas of Adıyaman, we came across a 12 year-old girl called Emine who had been in school only for a short time. We chose a time that her father especially would be at home. He was an old man on his second marriage. His wife was paralysed, Emine’s elder brother had meningitis and both of them needed care.

The old man explained: If I don’t work, we’ll starve so who will look after them if Emine goes to school?

We asked Emine if she wanted to go to school and she said yes. So we proposed that she should attend school three days a week while her father stayed at home. Then he could go to work for the rest of the week, leaving Emine at home.

He liked this idea and decided to try it out until the beginning of the summer holidays.

Our work has been just like this throughout the campaign: locating children who are out of school, looking into their situations and finding solutions.

Many of the families were persuaded and the children were enrolled in school. But our work really only starts then: afterwards, we need to follow them to ensure that they continue to attend and complete their education.

Haydi Kızlar Okula! is a fight against ignorance. All children want to go to school and learn how to read and write -- we can’t leave them trapped by ignorance.
Photograph by Rana Mullan
© UNICEF Turkey 2005

Çağlayan Gedik
Psychology Consultant, Gaziantep

Haydi Kızlar Okula! is a fight against ignorance. All children want to go to school and learn how to read and write -- we can’t leave them trapped by ignorance.

There are a great many immigrants in Gaziantep so it’s difficult to keep track of the constant movement of new people. Even so we left no home unvisited.

All our personnel helped with the screening and advocacy work. We gave training seminars for all the psychology consultants and they trained field workers in communication methods to be used for convincing parents.

Twenty-four psychologists from the Provincial Directorate of Education took part and 821 community leaders and 657 imams were given two days training in order to recruit their support. Twenty-two NGOs, many volunteers and members of parent-teacher associations worked together during advocacy activities.

We also set up a monitoring and evaluation team and revisited those parts of the city where earlier screening and advocacy had taken place to see how things were going.

Once, we came across a family who had just settled in Gaziantep a month before. There were three daughters out of school.

They were so happy when we visited them at home -- you could see it in their eyes. Their father was unemployed, so we got the family support from the Social Solidarity and Assistance Fund (SYDTF) and enrolled the three sisters at school. I’m very proud of this. If they only learn how to read and write, I think it will make a great difference for their future.

… the sense of loss stays with people when they are kept out of school as children.
Photograph by Rana Mullan
© UNICEF Turkey 2005

Bahattin Kabahasanoğlu
Director, Public Education Centre, İstanbul

My personal feeling is that children who are out of school want an education as much as their peers do. Even though they may be out of the system, they are at least willing to learn to read and write whatever their age may be.

There was a seventy-year-old lady, Ayten Teyze, who completed the first and second steps of the literacy course at our centre and got her certificate.

One day she called by my office with her certificate and said: Do you know why I wanted to start reading at my age? So I asked her why it was so important.

Her eyes filled with tears as she said: I am going to take this certificate to the grave of my mother and say: You kept me out of school, but I finally made it and I can read and write.

So the sense of loss stays with people when they are kept from school as children. All through life, they feel something is missing and they long to correct it.

I’m a village child and I’ve lived with the problems of being a village girl as well.
Photograph by Rana Mullan
© UNICEF Turkey 2005

Cennet Öter
Primary School Teacher, Van

I was brought up in a village so I know the problems of being a village girl well. To begin with, my family didn’t want me to go to school. I only made it thanks to our local primary school teacher and I owe it to her today that I too am a teacher.

Throughout the campaign we have seen ignorance and insensitivity beyond economic difficulties. People citing religious obligations as barriers to girls’ education, for instance. But we have learned that all these difficulties can be overcome by working patiently and approaching the problems of ordinary people with understanding.

Families, especially mothers, sent their daughters to school in my neighbourhood, saying things like: I couldn’t go to school, but I want my daughter to be a teacher like you one day. This was very moving but it also shows that the solution can be found if people have an attainable role-model.

Continue to the second part.

Read more about Haydi Kızlar Okula! the Ministry of National Education and UNICEF’s campaign to close the gender gap in primary education in Turkey by the end of 2005.