Last year, as you will remember, there was a huge earthquake in Türkiye and we reacted to this by setting up a fundraiser. Buoyed by a large donation of over £4000 by LRQA, the company that Benjamin Western one of the HaAD trustees works for, we raised £10000 to help with this disaster.
Unfortunately, up until now, we have not been able to help in this region due to political and logistical challenges.
I am happy though now to be able to report that we have identified a partner, KODA, that will be using this money on an upcoming project this summer in an area affected by the earthquake.
KODA is an association that has been working since 2016 to ensure that children in villages receive a better education. They carry out educational activities for teachers, teacher candidates and parents, conduct research and advocacy studies on educational issues in rural areas, and develop educational content appropriate to local conditions.
Following the earthquakes that struck Kahramanmaraş on February 6th, they began their post-disaster work to restructure education in rural areas and to provide families and children with psychosocial and educational support. Their earthquake related work consists of conducting needs assessments, reshaping and building programs, creating new content, and conducting research.
In August they will be hold training camps for the new period of the program. They are planning to use the donation to support the preparation of the training content of this program, the coordination of the program, the accommodation, food, etc. required for the camp. At the camp 80 classroom teachers who have been working in disaster areas in the first three years of their profession will receive personal, professional and disaster-specific training for 4 days. They are planning a special program for the needs of teachers who are new to the profession. There will be contents such as Art, Education in Nature, Disaster Pedagogy, Introduction to SEL (Social Emotional Learning).
Find out more details about the program.
It has taken some time to find the right partner in the area, but ensuring that we have the right partners on the ground has always been key to the work we do. This is important to make sure that the money you donate finds its way to help the people that we know you want to help when you make these donations.
Watch this space, we will provide updates as and when they are available.
