By ELA ESKINAZI | VP, Bridge to Turkiye Fund
Greetings from BTF,
We are excited to share some major developments in this update. If you recall, back in August 2016, we gave you heads-up about our sponsorship to produce and distribute Arabic pre-school education kits for Syrian refugee children. Due to the political environment in Turkey, and the adverse impact it has created on the local NGO's, we had to delay this project & the execution plans with the local partners. This past month in April, we started rolling-out this education kit for the refugee preschool children.
Just to calibrate ourselves on the population, over 3 million refugees live in Turkey, about half of this population is children, and vast majority of the children have been out of school for at least 5+ years. Although the migrant refugee population has found a new exile home, still over 40% of school-age children—or 380,000 child refugees—are still missing out on an education in Turkey according to a report published by UNICEF in January 2017. Barriers such as economic hardship, child labor, enrollment requirements, language difficulties, and a lack of affordable transportation keep them out of the classrooms.
Education is our focus, and has always been as it is the major gap and opportunity for the majority of the refugee children living in Turkey. Getting Ready for School” is an Arabic education kit composed of 4 activity based learning books, 1 puzzle, and 1 story book– all age appropriate education materials preparing little minds to the elementary school. We collaborated with Assoc. Prof. Dr. Selcuk Sirin from New York University who is specialized in Developmental Psychology with extensive research and field work focused on the refugee children in Turkey. He has originally developed this kit for the Turkish children 3 years ago and reached out to us to collaborate and find a way to bridge the benefits for the disadvantaged refugee children.
What is in it in the set for the refugee children?
The preschool education kit aims to develop 4 basic skills for the pre-school children. Visual skills, hearing skills, problem solving and motor skills and the education kit is set-up such that children will be able to complete individual activity sections anywhere at their pace, acquire keys at the end of sections, and solve the puzzle at the end, and the book will serve as a reward to finish the learning journey. We also added supplemental basic stationary tools so the kids can use them in related activities and can carry in a bag wherever they go. What we like about this education set is that it is a milestone driven, activity based learning, and will encourage child-parent or child-teacher interaction during the learning process.
The education part of the set includes:
Our total investment for this project is $35,000 which included translation services, design, print set-up, production, distribution, and all other additional stationary supply costs associated with the package. As we were working on the set formation, we wanted to make sure we also find strong field partners who can deliver these kits effectively, and integrate it as a tool in their existing curriculum targeting preschool aged kids. Yuva Association, Citizens Assembly (Yurttaslik Dernegi- previously known as Helsinki Yurttaslar Dernegi), and Imece Initiative based in Cesme/Izmir are our selected key partners for the pilot or initial phase. You can view their information at the table below. These NGOs provide year-long educational programs to the targeted children in their community centers. They have Syrian & Turkish educators, and volunteers who can guide little children and provide a fun and playful approach to learning in the absence of their parents.
In a few months, we will be hearing the real feedback from the children, and educators, and learn how best way to deploy these kits to increase its targeted reach and impact. The very first feedback we received from program coordinators is very positive; the teachers have found these kits to be very effective serving them well as a tool in the classrooms. We have capacity to distribute 3,000 more kits in the next few months, bringing our total deployment to total 5,000 kits at the end of the pilot period. We are curious to find out how the preschool children will react, what they like the most about the set, and what they would like to see more of so we can incorporate learnings into our education offerings in the future.
Thank You again for your strong support for our educational programs for the Syrian Refugee Children. With your continious support since Nov 2015, you are enabling these unique projects for them to achieve a better life and integrating them into a new society. Thank you for your trust and choosing us as your bridge to Syrian refugee children. We would also like to thank Global Giving as our key global partner in increasing our presence and connecting us to global donors just like you....
Bridge to Turkiye Fund
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