“We acted quickly but with the knowledge that we will be there for a long period.”
Senem Başyurt is the General Manager of the Mother and Child Education Foundation (AÇEV). The foundation focuses on early childhood development, working with children and their families. Most traits used later in life are established in early childhood. AÇEV works to minimize inequalities of opportunity in this stage and has been active in the earthquake region following the debilitating disaster.
Başyurt conveys that in crises like this, children suffer first and the most. They are the most vulnerable and have urgent health and developmental needs. In this disaster children experienced loss or separation from their caregivers and their support systems, their schools, and communities.
AÇEV first catered to immediate needs such as tents, heaters, baby food, and animal feed. For the mid-term, it is building child and family centers in Gaziantep, Hatay and Adıyaman. Başyurt states that all centers are prefabricated and can be moved and used elsewhere in the long-term. AÇEV will provide psychological support and art-based programs for children and their parents, then will move on to educational programs. She states that they also have a vehicle traveling to the hard-to-reach rural areas, where children have no access to early childhood services.
Başyurt underlines that recovery is a long-term thing: “This is an opportunity to acknowledge that we need better living spaces, better planned cities, and we need to think about the welfare of the children. We need to make sure the lives of children are not disrupted because childhood is such a short period of time. As AÇEV, we acted quickly but with the knowledge that we will be there for a long period.”
Published July 2023
