Valentina Schivardi - Fotosynthesis C.I.C.

This visit confirmed my previous perception about Turkish people: they are very friendly, warm and with a great sense of hospitality. I think the presentations gave me a good understanding of the current situation of the educational system and vocational training in Turkey. I would be very interested in using participatory photography to give a voice to young people from marginalized groups, including autistic and visually impaired people and also create opportunities to encourage community cohesion between different groups such as Turkish and Kurdish people.

Sireita Mullings - University of London Goldsmiths College

Having visited the county where many of my fellow citizens originate has provided better insight to respective cultures, histories and social stratifications which strengthens my view that irrespective of cultural or ethnic origin we face very similar problems often within very different contexts. Potential future collaboration:

P1: University collaboration where sociology departments employ visual ethnographic methods to document the role of organizations working with vulnerable and marginalized groups in the UK and Turkey. This type of ethnography will also serve as historical documentation of aspects of life in the current era.

P2: An exchange that focuses on strategies used for successful models of youth social enterprise. Young people and facilitators from respective countries share how to learn new ways and share existing methods of how to become active participants in their economic sustainability.

Folami Bayode - 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning

Potential areas of future collaboration: Skills sharing within Schools of fine arts to share sculpture, photography and digital media with students and staff from 198CAL. Setting up short-term pop-up galleries within the community of Balikesir to bring contemporary art into the community and encourage engagement with the arts to express and explore issues within the community. Maybe focus on therapeutic work with broken families. Working with vocational girls’ and boys’ school to find ways of using traditional skills as a means of self-expression in making contemporary artwork.

Leon Eroll Mcleod - Hackney Council

 I really enjoyed my experience and the hosts, and translators were amazing! I had no idea what to expect visiting turkey, although we were located away from Istanbul, I felt that I had a good perception of the Turkish culture and there lifestyles. Within our community we have a lot of Turkish residents, who may benefit from such exchange who may not have opportunities to visit their homeland, and explore the differences between to two countries.

Nihaya Al-Othmani - Southworks

The arrangements were well organized. Our hosts were very accommodating and took into consideration the groups requests at all times. I found the people very friendly and hospitable. The young people were keen to show us their work, seemed eager and enjoyed learning. The atmosphere in the vocational school was informal and relaxed. Suggestions: Staff of Autistic School can come to get a placement and experience exchange at some school of special education need - such as the Spa School or Snowfields school at South East London. Student group to volunteer from Balekesir for one week. Possible an exchange with students to do work placement at Southwark Works, where they can have a good ideas about the labor market in UK.

They might be given some tasks to do or to shadow some of our advisers. By this way they will be able to have an idea about how to conduct one to one advice session in relating to preparing job seekers, who are not job ready or inactive or who lived for a long time on social benefits and they have no experience or have no self esteem or confidents, helping them to have work experience, training or voluntary work to be able to work in their fields of expertise or to change their careers. Those students or candidate would be placed in family houses instead of hotels.

By this way they will learn about British Culture and life style beside the work experience Possible an exchange with students to do work placement at Southwark Works, to learn about labor market here, They might get support from a family they are going to live with in London for this period of time. By this way they can learn something about the culture and about the labor market.

Slideshow

Moses Bukenya

Perhaps I could write a book about the whole experience. As for me, am still struggling to pinpoint the most captivating moments of the trip. However, I can perhaps highlight a few that stood out.

The Hospitality - This was top class for me right from day one up-until we left Turkey. Our hosts went the extra mile and that made our meetings and tight schedule very interesting and was always looking forward to the next day's activities. I must admit, being the Projects & Network Co-ordinator for Embrace, I was challenged in seeing the level of organisation and effort that had been put into making the whole trip successful and worthwhile for all parties concerned.

The Meetings - Right from the start, the meetings were very inspiring and informative, challenging with lots of opportunities for future partnership projects. It was fantastic to discover that Turkey is on the transitional and transformational course with the rest of the developed world. It was also interesting to know that the Turkish Education System is in the process of reformation  and that the educators  and decision/policy makers were willing and open to new ideas of service delivery.
Perhaps, one thing that stood out for me out of all the meetings was the desperate need and desire for the Turkish Government to address the BIG Issue concerning the negative attitudes towards Disability in the work place and also the need to educate people in the work force about changing their perceptions towards people living with disabilities. Definitely, a great opportunity for our LEAP4WARD workshops.

Site seeing / Historical Visits - This was one of the most memorable experience and demonstrated how much the Turkish people delite in the richness of their history. I was also intrigued to find out how ancient cities like Pargamon were preserved for generations like ours to reconnect with our ancestors, regardless of colour or ethnicity.

Workshops - The workshops were excellent, engaging and very eye opening especially seeing both the professionals'/educators' and university students' [from Balikesir] participation. I have a feeling that all participants in our workshops were touched at the level of the facilitators' openness and interactive/engaging nature of the processes they went through during the workshops, and the fun that was involved. It was also interesting to hear Dr Fahri's comments on how the University students were so engaging and how he would love to introduce a new way of delivering lectures at the University by making the lessons more interactive/engaging and fun than lecturing.

On a personal note, I also got know my team mates better and although we were faced with some challenges, we manged to over come them amicably and this enabled us to grow together and stronger as a team.
I believe there is great room for improvement as a team and as part of our various organisations in partnership with the LEAP4WARD Project.
I believe that as an individual, in my capacity as a representative for Embrace [both nationally and internationally] was challenged but also inspired after the whole experience.
I believe I had the opportunity to know more about myself and my role in the team, as well as the impact we all had on each other as a team.
I believe that great doors are yet to open up for us in Turkey and many new projects will soon spring up in the year ahead [2012].
And I also believe that the success of what Embrace does both on the national and international stage sorely depends on how well we work with each other as well as effectively playing our roles in the VISION for Embrace.

Having said all the above, I am grateful to be part of such wonderful people who are destined for greatness and bringing about inspiration in the lives of others.

Thanks.