A Happy New Year

Dear Dosts,

I wish you a very happy and fruitful New Year.

Loves from Istanbul.

Hayal Köksal

Removing Barriers

Dear All,

After a week, it is lovely to come back to my country. I will be glad for sharing our experiences at Mauritius The first photo belongs to a good sharing & caring time with the Minister of Education, Tourism and HR_ Mr. Bunwaree. We, all the delegates and the challenged students of CMS visited him. The other photos and unforgattable moments will be shared later on.
30th December is the deadline for the registeration to the 6th International ICT Seagulls Competition. I wanted to remind you of it. With love and peace...
Hayal Köksal

Loves from Fethiye

My Dearest Colleagues,

Towards the end of the Eid, following an opportunity we flew to the south-west corner of Türkiye and came to Fethiye, Muğla this morning. It will last only 3 days to stay in Paradise and then I will fly to another paradise, called Mauritius. How lucky I feel myself with these unexpected candies, I cannot tell you! You can see 3 different views from Fethiye and Dead Sea (Ölü Deniz). Today is the 10th of December, it is a winter day and some people were swimming in the sea, can you imagine?

On Monday, our journey to Mauritius will start and I have been very excited for meeting old and new dosts and also witnessing some new methodologies for the training of the disabled (Challenged) students.

I wish you also realize your dreams this week just like me. Loves,

Hayal Köksal

Fest of Sacrifice & Its Reflections on Us

Dear Dosts,
I wish you a Fest of Sacrifice ornamented with love, peace and tolerance.
After the Feast of Ramadan we should emphasize the main aim of this Religious Day as it must have been. What is it? To help our colleagues, relatives and friends who are in need of our help and thus not to destroy the philosophy of our young children who love their sheep or cows just like their own pets. Let's make use of the good characteristics of our religion to bring up peace-lover generations. I wanted to share the caricature which was sent by a friend of mine_Suzan_ to emphasize this feature. I send my best wishes to her due to her sharing it with us.
We will be in Fethiye on 10th -13th December to meet our colleagues, and in Mauritius on 15th-22nd December to share the wonderful projects of the Challenged Students.
With an endless love to you...

Hayal Köksal

Challenged Students & 3rd December

Dear all,

Tomorrow is the "World Challenged People Day". The challenged ones are not different from the ones who are our dearests. Furthermore; it is a reality to become one of them due to some unexpected accidents or misfortunes. While the fact is like this; it is not justice to seperate one of the days of the year to "the handicapped" and to feel relieved. The most important thing to give the following feelings to such dearest dosts:

- S/he is not different from us as the human value,

- Our main responsibility is to understand their problems and to show real efforts to find solutions for them,

- To teach them some effective ways and tools on the way of empowering them in their own daily life procedures. Thus, to make them free from the compulsory help of others.

Feeling pity and even showing this negative feeling to them, furthering them and even insulting them are not the behavious of a qualified human being. Such kind of attitude is a sign of an "sick brain"!
Dear Dosts, I participated in a Unesco Workshop on 27-29 November in Antalya. It was about "Education for All (EFA)". It was very inspiring and useful for me. The first item of the FEA Program of Unesco was as follows:
"To give importance to the preschool education, especially for the challenged ones."
Through brainstorming and project offerings, EFA was supported by the participants who are mainly from NGOs, Universities and the Ministry of National Education. A few of those projects were for the Challenged ones. These are very motivating activities. However; on such an important day, I want to share my sadness with you:
On the very first day of September I got an invitation from the Convener of an International convention_Mr Mohundas Teeluck_ to the "1st International Convention on the Challenged Students Empowerment (ICCSE)" which will be realized by the collaboration of the'World Council for Total Quality & Excellence in Education (WCTQEE)' & 'Mauritius Government" in Mauritius on 17-19 December, 2008. I was invited with a large number Turkish delegation to the event as the Chief Coordinator of Turkey (I am the Director General of WCTQEE and ı also conduct projects with the challenged students). This event is the FIRST within the world and it has a great improtance for the challenged ones. In order to tell our special schools, activities, seminars and NGOs for the handicapped ones, it is a good opportunity. In addition to this, our two challenged speakers from the 11th ICSQCC had been specifically invited to that event as the special talks. Oh my dear colleagues, what a pity but we could not find any funding for those 2 students and their nurses to go to mauritius. I feel hopeless after a three-month- effort for searching some sponsors. While students coming from other countries are presenting their projects, we (with my journalist friend) will only watch them, feel happy for them but feel bad for the Turkish ones who are not able to go there due to financial reasons. We knocked on every related door_state, private and NGO. We tried to reach at higher authorities but could not realize our dreams. We informed all the famous daily newspapers but only one of them has been interested in it. This is so sad. I wonder if it is the same for my other colleagues, for other DGs. I will learn about it soon.

Yes, tomorrow is the Day for the Challenged ones. We must think more and longer about this issue. We, Turks are known as one of the most haspitable and helpful people. Let's prove it. Our Metropolitan Municipality has had 18 Special Center for the Challenged people. We have a General Directorate within the Ministry of National Education and we have hundreds of NGOs concerning the handicapped. We still have a few days more to find support for 4 people who will talk about their project. Besides, Mauritius does not ask for Visa for the participants. The mauritius Government will afford all the room, food and transfer expenses. The only load for us to but the plane tickets and leave for Mauritius with the projects and papers to be presented there.
Now, hear our voice and help us to realize this dream for the Turkish challenged people. If we cannot do this, as a teacher I will lose my faith to Education, Collaboration and ...

I hope we will be there and prove the power of İmece to the whole world. Thanks to you_Mohundas for this great work you realized.

Dr. Hayal Köksal