OCTAA Donates $1500 to
“Baba Beni Okula Gönder-Dad Send Me to School”
Girls’ Educational Program in Turkey
I am pleased to report that on behalf of the Turkish-American community in Orange County, I presented Cagdas Yasami Destekleme Dernegi [Association in Support of Contemporary Living (ÇYDD)] a donation check for $1500 to benefit the “Baba Beni Okula Gonder” girls’ educational campaign. Funds were raised at the book promotional event Tales From The Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey, two Turkish cinema events, and through individual contributions received during 2006.
I had the honor of meeting with Prof. Dr. Türkan Saylan, President of ÇYDD, at the organization’s headquarters in Istanbul on November 13th. She has an amazing energy, dedication, and drive to lead the most successful, largest non-profit organization supporting educational programs in Turkey since 1989 with the help of 50,000 volunteers.
Dr. Saylan explained that through financial donations received to date, they have been able to provide scholarships for 15,000 girls in rural Turkey who would have been unable to attend school due to economic difficulties. Their near-term goal is to reach 100,000 young girls with everyone’s support. This program is also intended to build dormitories to allow young girls who live further away from schools to attend school. She also explained that the annual cost of scholarship for a student is $300. The cost of building a 100-student dorm is $370K and 200-student dorm is 650K. The project focuses on young girls and women because out of 7.5 million illiterate adults in Turkey in 2000, 24 percent were male and 76 percent were female. Boys are more likely to attend school than girls; in some regions male students outnumber female students two-to-one.
We further discussed ideas as to how our community here in OC can continue to support ÇYDD’s educational projects. Dr. Saylan invited us to participate in the organization’s new initiative for building libraries in rural schools under the campaign name “Bin Cicek Acsin, Bin Fikir Yesersin (One Thousand Flowers Bloom, one Thousand Ideas Flourish.)” She also stated that it would be a great help if we would establish summer programs to allow for outstanding select female and/or male students to attend English courses at OC community colleges or universities. We also discussed the idea to establish a penpal (e-mail) program between their students and our children and teenagers in Orange County to help them improve their English. We’ll keep you updated as we develop these projects next year. A copy of the receipt is enclosed in the following link.
With your generous contributions, OCTAA will continue to make a difference and be a part of solutions to improve the standard of living in Turkey through participation in educational projects.
We thank you for your continued support of OCTAA’s charitable projects.
Sincerely,
Sevda K. Aleckson
President
www.octaa.org
