ms robinson: so good afternoon everyone. iwanted to welcome you to the washington foreign press center today. today’s briefing ison bridging the educational gap for syrian refugee children. and we’re very pleasedto have with us today executive director of the fuller project for international reporting,dr. xanthe ackerman. she will start with some opening comments, and then we will open itup for questions. so without further ado. ms ackerman: thank you. thank you so muchfor having me here, doris. and nice to see all of you. happy to be talking about thistopic, one that i think we have cause for some optimism, as i think there’s a goodmoment for groups that are interested in helping with syrian education, especially in turkey,which is an area where i’ve focused.
by way of brief introduction, i am the directorof the fuller project for international reporting, which is a media organization that focuseson addressing the gender gap in reporting through multimedia journalism that focuseson women and on education. as far as thinking about education for syrianrefugees in turkey, the reason why i say there’s cause for some optimism is that we’ve movedthrough some different phases of the crisis and now some pieces have come together. inthe first phase of the crisis, the war started, we didn’t realize how long the war was goingto go, and turkey opened up its borders; refugees started coming across the border. turkey startedbuilding camps. they were said to be some of the best in the world, and many of therefugees came into those camps and children
were getting educated in those camps, themajority of the kids. in a second phase of the crisis, in otherneighboring countries to syria the borders began to close and there were more restrictionson syrians. and so many more syrians started to flood into turkey; the rate of the refugeescoming in accelerated. and in response, turkey built many more camps. by 2014, they had builtalmost all of the 25 camps that they have now, and those camps hit capacity, reachingup to just over 250,000 people in the camps. but at the same time, syrians flooded throughoutthe country on a much larger scale than could be met by this type of response. and so turkeybegan to put in place a legislative framework and passed temporary protection measures forsyrians so that they would have a right to
education. so that was a really importantmilestone that was passed in 2014. and then in a third phase, as isis was attackingkobani and huge numbers of syrians were crossing the borders into suruc in eastern turkey andthe numbers really skyrocketed so that now, as we are, we see estimates that are as manyas 2.5 million syrians in turkey, the government has started to really put in place a long-termplan for how to address the needs of the syrian children. so having moved through these three phases,now in addition to there being the will to welcome syrians and a legislative frameworkthat gives them rights, there’s also a planning framework. so i’ll tell you about the entrypoints for how organizations can think about
working with these children who are in turkeyand how the turkish government is thinking about working with them. the numbers can vary a bit, but most recentlythe numbers that we’ve seen are that there are 650,000 syrian children of school agein turkey; 250,000 of them in school, so about two-thirds of them out of school, a huge number.turkey has made a really bold commitment to increase the number of children who are inschool up to about 400,000 by the end of the school year, which is going to take a hugeamount of work and partnership. their plan consists mainly of two differententry points through the formal education system. the first is in their turkish schools.so going back to that legislative piece around
the right to education, syrians have the rightto go into turkish schools, and 40,000 of them have done that. so they can enroll withjust their temporary ids. the problems that they have are the ones thatyou would expect: the language barrier. there isn’t a lot of language training available,although that’s something that’s been recognized and the government is working on.they face bullying, as you can imagine if the children can’t keep up, and that canbe a difficult environment for them. the teachers don’t have the type of training that theywould need to be successful in a multilingual classroom, especially when there are childrenwho are coming from the kinds of situations that children coming from war have experienced.
but this is a really critical entry point,and education experts would stress moving into the formal education system as the mostimportant long-term goal, because refugees on average are out of their country for 17years. so as much as syrians will often say that they want to go home and they expectto go home, global norms would say that many of these children are going to be in turkeyfor the majority of their education. so moving into the formal education system as much aspossible is really important. the second way that the government is workingto serve their needs are through what’s called temporary education centers. so theseare often run in the second shift of a public school, from 1:30 to 5:30 in the afternoon.and the government will run them with syrian
partners – a syrian head of school, forexample – with syrian volunteer teachers who will receive stipends. it’ll be runin arabic with all syrian students, and they have a curriculum that has been developedby the syrian interim government, and then exams are administered jointly with the turkishgovernment and with the syrian interim government. and that curriculum is slightly modified fromwhat was in syria. so this is also really important, and there’sover a hundred of these in the country, and there’s a lot of ngos that are coming into support these, to give the stipends to the teachers and to give them materials. andthese are places where innovation can come in, where tablets can be provided, or lotsof different things can happen just at municipal
level. then a third and really important thing that’shappening is that the syrians and the turks who are on the ground and who see the needaround them all the time are coming up with lots of different approaches to address thereally difficult issues that these formal approaches can’t always get to. child laboris a huge issue. there aren’t any really good estimates for how many children are working,but there’s lots of anecdotal evidence. and the children who are working are oftenbreadwinners for their families, so it’s very difficult, even if you provide the educationalopportunity, to cancel the need for that income for the families.
so there are grassroots efforts to help familiesfind jobs, to provide some kind of play for those children, to strengthen the family unit,that sort of thing. and these are really promising and really important, and it’s really interestingto see, because in syria the civil society wasn’t very strong. it was really drivenby government. and so it’s a new and important development and with some nurturing can groweven stronger. and also in turkey, civil society is developing as a result of this crisis.so in some ways, that’s an important and potentially beneficial outcome of this. someof these ngos were active 10 years ago or 15 years ago and have now become activatedagain as a result of this crisis, but they have a huge amount of difficult accessingfunding.
so those are the main entry points. turkeyhas also been extremely generous with scholarships to university, noting that these are the syrianswho are going to be called on to rebuild the country and also create ties between turkeyand syria and the middle east, and so there have been thousands of scholarships at thatlevel as well. so i’ll stop there and take any questionsthat you might have. ms robinson: great. and just a reminder tostate your name and your media organization before you ask your question. question: well, actually, my name is (inaudible)and i’m with the voice of america turkish service. i was hoping that we can have youfor a short interview, so i’m going to keep
my questions for later. ms ackerman: okay. question: rahim rashidi with kurdistan tv,same. question: same. question: i also scheduled an interview withyou, but i think we can have an open discussion. ms ackerman: sure, sure. question: yeah. so your focus is on the syrianchildrens in turkey. do you think turkey is very different from other countries acceptingchildren refugees and regarding education for the children?
ms ackerman: yeah, i do think there are somesignificant structural differences. turkey – well, if you compare it to lebanon, forexample, turkey is in a better position economically. and so they have – the infrastructure hasbeen able to absorb the refugees in a way that’s more advantageous to the refugees.so although the children are not in school – there’s still a huge number of childrenout of school in turkey on parallel to lebanon – the families have been able to find smallapartments to rent, and so they’re not in settlements outside, exposed to the elementsin the same way that they are in lebanon. it’s also going to be much easier now forturkey, now that all of these pieces are in place, for them to move forward quickly, becausepeople are – they are in urban centers,
they are in apartments. when the school isprovided, many more people are going to able to be collected. so in lebanon, people aresettled all over in different areas. it’s going to be much more difficult to put togetheran organized response. in lebanon, they have put a lot of emphasis on double-shifting,especially for primary school students. they have different barriers as far as language.obviously, arabic is a common language, but at the same time, they have french and englishas the children get into higher levels. so it’s easier in some ways for the youngerchildren, but the language barriers do come in as well. jordan, i think the integration in the campsis much more important. the role of the camps
is more important in jordan. it – whereasin turkey, the camps are really just serving as small – a small fraction of the populationat this point. the camp population is under 300,000, whereas the total population of thecountry is over 2 million. so big differences as far as how people areliving and how they can be accessed with services and how all of that can be organized. yeah. question: what about in, like, european countriesor in the u.s.? i bet the culture shock is, like, enormous for them. ms ackerman: yeah. question: and i don’t know, how do theydeal with the education for the children here
in the u.s.? ms ackerman: sure. i haven’t spoken withfamilies that have come to the u.s. i think the syrian – i have spoken with syrian familieswho are preparing to move to europe, and they were very, very hopeful about getting theirchildren into a school system that they saw as giving the children options, giving thechildren a chance to get a diploma that would be recognized, feeling that they would havea hopeful future for their children. i think some of the steps that are going tobe put in place in turkey are going to be helpful in leveling some that. but i thinkat the same time, the culture shock, of course, is going to be a very real element. if a childmoves to sweden and needs to learn a completely
new language, depending on the age of thechild, of course, it’s going to be a very difficult – a new experience. question: can i ask some questions? my nameis tatsuya mizumoto from jiji press, which is japanese wire service. i want to make suresome statistics facts. so how many syrian children in now in turkey, frankly? yeah. ms ackerman: yeah, if you want to – if youwant to look for statistics online, you can look at unhcr for an online reference. that’sprobably the best place to get a source online. there are different numbers, but unhcr reportsthat there’s about 2.1 million registered refugees in turkey at the moment.
question: that is total number of the syrianrefugees. ms ackerman: right, the total number. andchildren – i think it’s about 75 percent of that. but they’ll give you the exactnumber. question: seventy-five percent of 2.1 million? question: so you said in your remarks thenumber is 650,000. ms ackerman: -- 650 – for school age. question: school age. ms ackerman: school age. question: in turkey.
ms ackerman: in turkey. question: and then is that 40,000 childrennow in turkish public school, right? ms ackerman: right. ms ackerman: out –. so the numbers thati was quoting are from the senior official dr. ozturk who advises the government on thesematters, and he gave those numbers in a voa interview just very recently. sometimes thereare different numbers, but those are the most recent numbers that i’ve seen. the numbersthat he gave were that there are 650,000 children of school age -- ms ackerman: -- in turkey. and that usuallyrefers to age 5 through 17. and that there
were 250,000 who were in school. question: 250, 250,000 are in school, outof – in school. ms ackerman: in school. in school. question: in turkey’s -- question: okay. so between 400,000 kids -- ms ackerman: 400, exactly. question: -- are out of school. ms ackerman: out of school. question: and then also you pointed out numberthree, the parents providing. i mean --
question: actually, is there any opportunityfor syrian parents can get a job in -- question: no? ms ackerman: yeah, that’s a really crucialissue. and it’s one that people have raised and there’s some discussion now about gettingmore facility for work permits for the parents. at the moment, syrian parents have a lot ofdifficulty getting work permits, so there’s less than 5,000 syrian adults that have workpermits in turkey. so there’s a huge number of syrians who work unregistered making very,very little money in exploitative conditions. question: so what is the main obstacle forthem? question: is that the language? i think asyou said, i guess the syrian people cannot
speak turkish. maybe arabic. ms ackerman: right. i think one – one challengeis that the work – one challenge and one thing that happens is that the work won’tbe given to a male head of household because the work is seen to be too low, and so anemployer won’t give it to a man, so it then goes to a child. so male heads of householdhave difficulty finding work, because there isn’t any work that’s suitable for a man.so the employer would rather give it to a child. so that’s why children end up working.and syrian women – the majority didn’t work, and many syrian women would prefer tobe at home taking care of their children and many don’t feel comfortable moving aroundand working. and so a lot of times children
are working as main breadwinners. a lot of turks don’t feel that syrians necessarilyshould be taking jobs away from turks. i think there’s about a 50-50 divide as far as publicopinion on that issue, so that is one obstacle. although the turkish economy is growing, ofcourse there’s still unemployment and there are turkish citizens who also need jobs, sothere’s a political obstacle there. but i think there are opportunities for job creationschemes. turkey has a great manufacturing sector. there are other experiences in othercountries that could be brought, that could create opportunities both for turkish citizensand also for syrian citizens at the same time so that some of those political obstaclescould be addressed.
question: can you see any social conflictionbetween turkish and syrians? they are same muslim, but their culture or their historyor their language are different, so is there any discrimination or -- ms ackerman: right. yeah, there have beeninstances and there have been outbreaks. there was – there were a series of protests aroundthis time last year, anti-syrian protests in the south. but given the scale of syriansin turkey, i would have to say it’s quite low and it’s quite remarkable how much warmththere is. i mean, the country has accepted a huge number of refugees, and of course theyare refugees for the most part without income or without high income, and so it is an economicstrain. but for the most part, people are
welcoming. there are opinion polls that show – there’smixed feelings, but i’ve seen some incredible stories of generosity, including in one citycalled kilis, which is down in the southern area, where they had a population of 90,000and then they had over 100,000 syrians come. and they continue to welcome them, and i wentto one of their town celebrations, where everyone was together, breaking bread together. andthat’s the policy of the municipality, is to welcome and to continue to welcome. andso i think overwhelmingly people are welcoming and doing everything they can, and of courseit’s a strain and a stressful situation. question: mm-hmm. so if you can – if youare wanting to focus on children issues, what
international society can do quickly? ms ackerman: mm-hmm. well, money needs tobe channeled into these different areas. so money immediately can be channeled into settingup school blocks which can be used as temporary education centers. as soon as those schoolsare set up, as soon as there’s a school head, the children will come to the school.so if they can be set up, if buses can be provided – that is a question of funding.as soon as that money is made available, those things can be operationalized and the childrenwill come. other programs that can support that and getat some of the more difficult challenges, like community centers, are hugely important.i think sometimes people are looking for a
silver bullet that will solve everything,but the clusters of different solutions are also important. the community center thatcan take people in and address the family problem and say that the father’s not workingbut he wants to, they’re having difficulty with the children, and they don’t have anapartment, and then solve all of those problems together can strengthen the family, help thechildren, get the children in school. so those community centers are really important. support for women – women heads of household– there are so many who have come alone, who may be facing domestic violence, who arehaving a hard time supporting their children – so more programs to support women so theycan support themselves and support their families
as well – all of those things. and there are so many actors that want tohelp. they need to move in and they need to help, and there is room for partnership. theturkish government now has modality to work with international ngos. there’s a eu trustfund that’s made money available. so financing, i think, is a big – putting the financingthere and then partners moving in. ms robinson: great. did anyone else have aquestion before we break for one-on-one interviews? so – well, with that, we will end this discussion,and we want to thank you for taking the time to join us. ms ackerman: thank you so much.
ms ackerman: thank you all. ms robinson: thank you.
0 Komentar untuk "winter clothes"