Work Continues in Biga!

Dear Friends,

The women of the Biga Women and Children's Center are continuing their hard work! This week the center was fitted with ceramic tiles in the bathroom and kitchen. Additionally, the future teachers and and volunteers (the lifeblood of the center!) will this week have completed 500 surveys of local families to find out how they might best use the center. In the meantime they are anxiously awaiting an answer from a local firm that might supply some state-of-the-art siding for the outside of the center.

In other news, I am once again fundraising...this time to get myself over to Turkey for the opening ceremony the first week in November! This ceremony will represent the culmination of all of the work done up to this point, as well as the financial resources invested in this worthy project. It will function as a symbol and public showing of our support for these women's work, and for the right of each child in the Biga community to have early childhood education. Our hope is that this ceremony will earn the center respect and legitimacy in the community, as well as spark the interested and earn the trust of potential patrons of the center.

I will be using facebook causes (where this all started!) birthday application to try to raise the additional $500 needed to get me to Turkey and back. Please spread the word!

all my best and thanks for reading,
Jill



Pictures:

1. Center volunteers sorting through piles of donated items for the center:

2. Center volunteers in what will be one of two children's classrooms:

3. Men at work on the center:

4. Ayfer ablam and Omer Kucuk meeting about the building plans:

A Floor in the Works!

Dear Friends,

Apologies for the delay in updates! While our friends in Biga were taking a well-deserved break and celebrating Seker Bayrami, I was moving into my graduate school housing in Princeton, NJ. I'm all moved in now, and started intermediate Turkish today! Wish me luck :)

And meanwhile, in the realm of much more important things, the center has a floor in the works. The cement pouring was delayed for a few days but now has been poured and is drying. Tomorrow ceremic tiles will be fitted and set in the bathrooms.

Here are some move pictures from the field:

As ever, many thanks and all my best,

Jill

We have a roof!

Dear friends,

I write you today with very happy news! Our center has a roof:

Today and tomorrow, the plumbing and central heating systems are being installed. On Wednesday the alum cement will be poured and then will be given two to three days to dry. These few days when work can't be done come at a fortuitous time, coinciding exactly with the Seker Bayrami, the religious holiday that marks the end of Ramadan in Turkey.

For my Turkish-speaking readers, this quote, take from an email to me from Ayfer Baykal, expresses the excitement of the women today: "Cok heycanli, o kadar mutluyum merkezimiz bitiyor, Jill!"

All my best,

Jill :)

Biga women already at work as building continues

Dearest friends,

I received an email from my good friends in Biga yesterday letting me know that the roofing materials have finally arrived! After weeks of waiting and being in constant contact with the factory and distributer, the sandwich panels arrived Thursday. In two days time the roof will be finished and work inside the center can commence. The roof has been the missing linchpin in the building process this summer, as any interior work requires protection from the elements.

In the meantime the women have already been hard at work. The group of teachers and volunteers that will be life-force of the center have been walking around the neighborhoods closest to the center, telling people about the center's functions and goals, and asking local women what they would use the center for. Their main purpose is to survey local families on their greatest needs and challenges, as well as the ways they could use the center to find solutions. Would they be likely to enroll in a women's savings group, or would they be more interested in the practical value of sewing lessons and the use of the center's sewing machines? How old are their children, and would they be interested in entering them in preschool or daycare? Would the family potentially use this as a social space?

1. The roofings supplies in front of the center:

2. The survey team hard at work!

Thanks for reading!

:) Jill

The Plan!

Dearest friends,

As I mentioned in my last post, we met with our builder Omer Kucuk in my last few days in Biga to draw up a realistic building schedule.

Here is the result:

August 25: Arrival of the roofing supplies
August 26: Installation of the roof
August 27: Installation continued
August 28: Installation of the plumbing system
August 30: Installation of the alum flooring
August 31: Installation continued
September 3: Ceramic flooring
September 4: Ceramic flooring
September 5: Water installation
September 7: Ceiling construction
September 8: Painting interior walls
September 9: Assembling the windows
September 10: Electric work
September 11: Natural gas work
September 12: Natural gas work continued
September 13: Assembling the bathrooms
September 14: Assembling heating system
September 15: Assembling heating system continued
September 16: Outside siding installation
September 17: Outside siding installation continued
September 18: Outside siding installation continued
September 19: Platform stairs
September 20: Assembling the garden tiles
September 21-23: Organizing the garden
September 24: Arranging the kitchen appliances/furniture
September 25: Finishing any incomplete work
September 26: Furnishing the building

As you can see, with this schedule the center should be finished within a month!

I'll be updating you as the plan plays out...:)

all my best,
Jill

Final Days in Biga

Dear Friends,

I write to you today from my house in New Hampshire. After three weeks in Biga, I feel energized and hopeful about the construction of the center, and inspired by good people who will be the leaders, teachers, and truly the life of the center the years to come.

My final days in Biga were bitter-sweet; bitter because I would have to leave my friends there again soon, and because there were still so many more people who I hadn't had a chance to see. Sweet because I felt that we had accomplished a lot in my short time there, and that we were beginning to see community support in very concrete ways.

Last Thursday, Ayfer and I met with representatives from Dogtas to measure out the dimensions of the kitchen and women's classroom, and to match our needs with their product options:

On Friday, the municipality sent workers to clean our site and to move some materials into the center:

Also on Friday, Ayfer Baykal and I met with Omer Kucuk to make a concrete and realistic building plan. With knowledge of when supplies are going to come and how long each step will take, we determined that the center construction will be finished by the end of September.

Final, on Friday at 4pm, the women who will be running the center met with the Biga mayor and local press at the center site. They discussed what this center will mean for the community and how to best equip it with necessary resources, and to disburse those resources into the community.

Though not 100% correct in content, articles in local papers like this one reported the gist of the event:

http://www.canakkalemedya.com/haber_detay.asp?haberID=340

Finally, also in the last days of my visit, Ayfer Baykal held the second meeting for volunteers and teachers at the Biga Women and Children's Center:

There were difficult times during my visit; supplies did not arrive on time and some local promises of support were left unfulfilled; the building did not physically change while I was there. But, through hard work and optimism, we were able to accomplish a lot. We hired a builder, we ordered supplies, we found in-kind support from some wonderful local businesses. We pulled more and more people on-board. We brought in business people to support equal education for children from poorer families, found women who wanted to help other women come together and become economically and socially empowered, and told everyone we could about the center and the many possibilities it holds for improving the futures of Biga women and children.

We asked for help and found it; we thanked people for their time and they thanked us - BTF especially - for caring about their community.

Even though I am back in the US, I am going to continue to blog in "real-time" with the help of every-other-day emails from Biga - so stay tuned!

Our opening ceremony is now planned for October, and I am going to do everything in my power to get back to Biga for the occasion.

As always, thanks for reading and for supporting!

all my best,

Jill

Second Installment Arrives!

Dear friends,

Again for the sake of transparency, we wanted to share this proof or receipt of the second installment of $14,000 from the Bikad Women's Cooperative:



all my best,
Jill