WUNRN
UNGEI - The United Nations Girls'
Education Initiative
Turkey:
'Hey Girls, Let’s Go to School!'
©UNICEF
NYHQ/2005/Beck
A young girl in Van province, where
high percentages of children do not attend school.
VAN,
Turkey – In hundreds of villages here, in schools and homes and coffee houses,
the same question is being asked by teachers, journalists, local activists and
religious leaders.
“What will
it take to get your daughter in school?”
Some 500,000
girls in Turkey do not attend classes. But thanks to a major education drive,
approximately 120,000 girls have enrolled in the last two years.
The
campaign, dubbed ‘Hey Girls, Let’s Go to School,’ depends on a vast network of
volunteers who go door-to-door to lobby parents on the value of education.
In Van,
where the nationwide campaign was launched in 2003, poverty and cultural
traditions have historically kept girls at home. Up to half of all girls in
this eastern province are estimated to be out of school. Yet through the
efforts of the campaign, 20,000 girls have enrolled for the first time.
Local
efforts
On a stop in
Bakimli village, a remote outpost near the Iranian border, a team of four
teachers checks a list of children and nods at a mud house where an
eight-year-old girl is said to be out of school.
The woman
who answers the door does not appear surprised at the group gathered on her
front steps – in accordance with the campaign’s closely monitored rules,
volunteers visit each village regularly in order to assess progress and ensure
that parents follow through when it comes time to register for school. With an
air of resignation, she arranges chairs for the visitors almost before the
first greetings are exchanged.
©
UNICEF NYHQ/2005/Beck
Local teacher Sukran Celik visits
local homes to convince parents to send their daughters to school.
“My
husband and brother are working in Istanbul,” she says. “I’m afraid to stay
home alone. And I don’t think my daughter really needs to go to school.”
Sukran
Celik, a teacher from Van who works on the campaign in her spare time, nods
sympathetically. “But isn’t it hard for you to read instructions when you go
places? If your daughter is educated, she can earn money and bring in a salary
and care for her mother.”
Twenty
minutes later, the mother is wavering – won over by the force of Sukran’s
arguments, she still worries that education will spoil her daughter for
marriage. It takes a visit from the village imam, Ibrahim Yasin, to persuade
her that school will make her daughter a better mother someday.
Like many
religious leaders in Turkey, the imam promotes girls’ education during Friday
prayers. “It is a girl’s right to go to school,” he says. “A girl must be
educated. Islam tells us this.”
Above all,
it is the connection between neighbors that seals the mother’s decision to send
her daughter to school. “I am a role model, because I am educated,” says
Sukran. “I am from Van; I am from this culture; I show them that this is what
girls can be.”
Ongoing
challenges
Among its
many successes the campaign counts increased media visibility and support from
prominent politicians, including the Prime Minister and First Lady of Turkey.
Numerous spin-off projects have been created to help raise funds for schools,
and a growing number of volunteers are signing up from a wide variety of
professions.
©UNICEF
NYHQ/2005/Beck
High school principal Bahri
Yildizbas debates the merits of girls’ education with family members near Van,
Turkey.
Yet
persistent poverty and insufficient resources continue to plague the national
education system, with dire results for children. Schools are scarce and
overcrowded; conditions in urban slums and rural areas are especially bad. And
for families that are struggling to afford food for their children, even the
most basic school supplies can be well out of reach.
At a
community meeting in Van, women respond favorably to a campaign coordinator’s
speech on the importance of education. But murmurs arise when the volunteer, a
respected local high school principal named Bahri Yildizbas, tells them that it
is their duty as parents to send their children to school.
“We want
education, but we don’t have the money,” says one mother. “The school is far
away – it takes too much time to get there, and it’s not safe,” says another.
While these
practical obstacles hamper progress, the campaign has helped create a hunger
for change that promises to pay dividends for decades to come.
According to
Zozan Ozgokce, the head of the Van Women’s Association and another volunteer
who visits local homes, there is a growing consensus that education is an
imperative for every child.
“When we ask
women how they want their children to live, they almost never say, ‘like me.’
And when we ask the women what they want to be, they say, ‘educated.’
“It might
take 25 years for the effects of this campaign to show,” she says. “But the
campaign will still be visible then – because it is this generation that will
show how the world can be.”
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