Let’s Be United 101
“Let’s Be United” is a project initiated by Koç University GlobalAid community, aimed to break the prejudice and peer bullying between refugee and/or immigrant and local children at the secondary school age. It is seen that many immigrant children who come to our country do not have a healthy communication with their peers, cannot adapt to their school and environment due to the traumas they have experienced. In line with these problems, we wanted the communication between local and refugee kids to reach a healthier level in an extracurricular environment. During the creation process of the project, we worked with scholars and experts at our university about the content of the workshops. In addition, our previous collaborations include Small Projects Istanbul, a non-governmental organization, Fatih Uzun Yusuf Secondary School, Gaziantep Cemil Alevli IB College (High School).
The project is a 7-week workshop program that begins with meet and greet activities that focuses on finding mutual interests and characteristics. The second week starts with the first workshop that intends to break societal norms regarding gender roles and build awareness on gender equality. Third week’s workshops concentrate on studying human rights, ensuring that kids understand the importance of respecting other people’s rights as well as their own, along with working on communication skills. During the fourth week, we try to attract shy or timid students with our creative drama workshop. The fifth week continues with the music workshop that centralizes listening, respecting others’ when it is their turn to shine, as well as developing self-awareness. In the sixth week, we try to strengthen the cohesion and the unity by disseminating what the students know about each other with the board game and empathy workshops. As the final workshop, we ask students to bake cakes together, and put on an exhibition that consist of the items students created during the workshops.
After implementing the pilot project in Fatih Uzun Yusuf Secondary School in June 2019 for seven weeks, we wanted to increase the sustainability of our project as much as possible. There came our collaboration with Gaziantep Cemil Alevli High School. However, we did not implement the project for seven weeks in Gaziantep since we were unable to do so. Instead, we prepared our 4-day long training process with college students regarding the contents of the workshop, communication with children and important points in the implementation of the project. After this four-day training period, Cemil Alevli High School students came together with Turkish and Syrian children at Ömer Asım Aksoy Secondary School. In order to share our personal experiences, answer questions and track the progress of the project, we developed a buddy system where we matched KUGlobalAid volunteers with high school students one-on-one.
Ethnicity-related bullying is a problem increasingly experienced not only in Turkey but also in the rest of the world. Therefore, the need for projects like Let’s Be United also increases. We encourage you to join us in this movement of making the world a better place to live for everyone.
Written by Hatice Yalçıntürk
