Pre-school education kit brings happiness for Syrian refugee children

YUVA Kirikhan Community Center — Yard Scene where children are reading the book “Little Lamby” from the pre-school set, since its inception, BTF’s Syrian Refugee Program delivered over $150,000 aid to the disadvantaged children & their moms.

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.

As Bridge to Turkiye Fund, based on the mission of serving underprivileged children & their education since 2003, we rose to fill their education gap with various programs since November 2015. In the last 18 months, we created and delivered multiple projects valued over $150,000 to address the needs of the children, the ones that are living off-camps in various cities and for their caring mothers for their social integration.

The new Arabic preschool education kit distributed to NGO’s serving refugee children in Turkey

In April 2017, we started rolling-out a new pre-school education kit for the refugee preschool children. “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 find a way to bridge the benefits for the disadvantaged refugee children.

The kits are introduced by the guidance of educators, teachers in the classroom setting in YUVA’s Konya Center

Refugee children is working on the set, completing learning activities in YUVA’s Konya Center

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 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:

1. Seeing: Aimed at improving observation & perception skills
2. Hearing: Aimed at improving hearing, listening skills
3. Drawing and Writing: Aimed at improving hand- fine motor skills, and muscle development
4. Solving: Aimed at improving problem solving, solution finding skills.
5. Story Book: Little Lamb Lamby
6. Puzzle

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 Yurttaşlar Derneği), and Imece Initiative based in Cesme/Izmir are our selected key partners for the pilot or initial phase. 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.

The children who just received their bags filled with education kit & stationary

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. 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 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. We are grateful for our supporters for our Syrian Refugee Program, you are empowering us to deliver these unique programs and undertakings with local field partners. Thank you again for your generous donations, and ongoing interest and support for our programs. We also would like to thank Ayse Sirin from BAUArt for coordinating our correspondence with our publishing company, and keeping us live managing the other side of our bridge with partners. Please feel free to drop us a note here, or email us at info@bridgetoturkiye.org.

Read our other stories — Building Bridges

Bridge to Türkiye Fund (BTF) is a US based, volunteer run, charitable non-profit, 501©(3) organization.