Supporting the Education

We know that it is crucial for today’s children to have computer skills and we realize that being equipped with the basic language of the information technologies will make a difference for their future success. We are also very aware of the inequalities that inhibits access to resources in disadvantaged communities; once again we say that ‘All Children are Ours’ and try to make computers and the computer related activities accessible to all children all over the country, enlarging their worlds and dreams about the future by building computer labs or donating equipment, providing with software, educating teachers and students. In the computer labs we built in İstanbul, and Şanlıurfa children are getting ready for the future.

We organize workshops for our children to explore their areas of interest, develop new skills and build a safe, lively atmosphere where they can express themselves better in creative ways . For 3^rd and 4^th graders of an elementary school in Fatih we assembled workshops in 8 different subjects like Nature and Environment, Drama, Philosophy, English, Math, Music, Psychodrama, Arts and Crafts. At the start of the school year children chose a subject, and till the end of the year, every two weeks our volunteer instructors went to their classrooms to work with the children in their areas of interest.

We believe that one of the most important aspects of contributing to our children’s education is to support their teachers who spend the most time with them. Therefore, we organize seminars and workshops for teachers addressing their professional needs and help ease the problems they might face while proudly and dutifully executing their missions as educators. In 2017 we signed a protocol with the Şişli National Education Department and during the year we conducted teacher seminars led by our expert supporters, academicians, counselors, writers, and artists in a diverse array of subjects ranging from nonviolent communication skills to children’s literature, from storytelling to philosophy for children, from communication skills with parents to tricks of teaching math, from art education to peer pressure and bullying, from Montessori to discrimination. The feedback we received from the participants gave us insight and determination to continue these seminars.

During the pandemic, when the children had to stay at home, we designed a project to reach children from an online platform. Our project symbol was Dodo, the owl, an avid reader, and storyteller which we also used as the symbol of our in-class book reading activities at schools, Dodo is Reading. We chose 19 fairy tales from a very diverse selection of sources, tales we were told in our childhood, and some we read, with language and themes suitable for kinder garden and elementary school children. We eventually ended up writing these well-known fairy tales in our words and a fresh perspective under the supervision of our pedagogical counselor Selda Özen. Since we aspired to tell the stories in an old fashioned, improvisational style we felt the need to get online education sessions from professional storytellers. All the brainstorming, design meetings, and education sessions were held online, and our volunteer storytellers recorded their fairy tales from their homes as for the spirit of the times! Besides recorded tales, a set of exercises and work sheets fostering critical thinking and creativity in children were prepared to be also published online to help parents and adults spend quality time with their children while working on these exercises together.
Dodo is Telling Fairy Tales was published on our YouTube channel on 23rd April 2021.

We love 23^rd April National Sovereignty and Children’s Day! We want our children to learn the importance of the opening of our National Assembly and have a good time celebrating the day named after the children. Therefore, on every 23^rd April, we send colorful T-shirts, hats, balloons to children all over Turkey to make them smile. When our children are happy, we are happy too!