Creative Reading Project with Turkish Education Volunteers Foundation (TEGV)
Yapı Kredi supports the creative reading project in partnership with TEGV. The project aims to help elementary school students, who have limited financial resources, receive a contemporary education that encourages curiosity and creativity, as well as providing educational extracurricular activities. In line with Yapı Kredi’s goals in supporting education, the project is put into practice nationwide at TEGV’s 66 locations, including 11 education parks and 55 learning centers. One room in each of the parks and centers are designed to facilitate the project.
Creative reading activities focus on creating a reading environment for elementary school children where they are encouraged to enjoy listening and reading while learning how to think scientifically, critically, constructively, and creatively. Moreover, the project promotes developing effective speaking and debating skills on specific subjects, as well as deductive thinking skills to comprehend what they have seen, read, and heard. This project also assists these children in expressing their experiences to peers, both verbally and in writing.
Using volunteer educators, the project plans to reach 50,000 children by 2010 to encourage them to enjoy reading while developing good reading habits. Moreover, the project endeavours to improve their abilities to think, research, question, and analyse. Thus, children are expected to delve into the stories, poems and pictures by examining their events, plots, characters, environments, emotions, and themes. Furthermore, they are persuaded to use their own experiences and thoughts to understand the texts they read or hear and to offer differing viewpoints on the events in these texts through deductive thinking.
The project was initiated on December 4, 2006; children attending TEGV showed great interest in the project. The average usage of the rooms has reached 158%; and in an eleven-month period, 1765 volunteers have been trained and 57.288 children have attended the activities.
In 2009, actress Fadik Sevin Atasoy and pianist Tuluğ Tırpan get together with the TEGV children within the context of the project. They told their favorite stories and dramatized “Le Petit Prince- Little Prince” story with the children at the learning center and education park in Mardin, Diyarbakır and Van.
Moreover, Yapı Kredi employees which are the members of the Yapı Kredi Theatre Club trained TEGV children about drama and they put on a show (Kuva-i Milliye from Nazım Hikmet) together.
TEGV Official Website
Visuals from the project
Additional Information
Working Paper
The Cover of the Poetry Book
