By Ela Eskinazi | VP, Bridge to Turkiye Fund
Greetings from BTF,
Hope you are following us in different platforms, and seeing our continued focus on helping Syrian refugee children, the mission we took on since November 2015.
Overall, this summer has been a challenging environment for NGO’s operating in Turkey especially when it comes to supporting or funding new projects for the refugees. We have been able to develop new projects and nurture existing partnerships with local NGO's and continued our support for children & their families in different programs.
Recently, we have funded a new project called “ Women’s Knitting Cooperative” in partnership with Small Projects Istanbul (SPI), one of our project partners in October. Those of you following us from last year know that we invested significantly on a group collective initiative where 20 refugee women came together and knitted winter goods, made money, and supported their own children and daily living expenses. We integrated these hand-made winter essential goods such as gloves, hats and scarf’s in our collection, and sent them in batches as part of our 4Kids programs to the rural schools that experince harsh weather conditions in Turkey. BTF have been operating these annual school & student aid programs such as Boots4Kids, Coats4Kids for over 10 years. This year we collaborated with SPI for an expansion of this project by integrating and supporting additional women with total number of 60 into this knitting initiative. We spent about $14,000 to fully cover the project expenses such as knitting materials, tools, shipping needs, and other overhead. By the end of the project, BTF will provide 1000 hats, 1000 gloves and 1000 scarfs to the children in need of these winter goods through the Syrian Women Knitting Collective.
This collective is more than the number of hats and gloves, it provides the best opportunity for women to connect, get local coaching and help for their social integration & health services needs. They seek help for their problems from the collective tutors and provide solutions and solidarity for each other. Some Syrian women in the program know how to knit, and some do not, but as they learn to knit - building a new skill, all together these women heal from their wounds, and increase their wellbeing to integrate to the social life & support their families. This is the major impact of this project, finding and providing them a safe and productive place where they speak and connect with each other.
In the photos below, you can see the most recent batch production pictures of these goods worn by their own children which we received last week. You can see children’s happines, these winter sets come in multiple colors. This collective project is expected to last for the next 5 months, and will conclude with the end of the winter-season in March…
On a side note, we have delays in distributing our pre-school education kit to refugee children. This was the project we mentioned in our last update in September, and please stay tuned. In the next update, we look forward to sharing more about this education project and a few more, and the impact our projects generate for families and the children…
Thank you again for providing support, financial resources for the Syrian refugee children & families, and helping them to build a better life. We are thankful for the Global Giving platfrom partnership in helping us reaching more supporters everyday.
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By Ela Eskinazi | VP, Bridge to Turkiye Fund
By Ela Eskinazi | VP, Bridge to Turkiye Fund
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