GAP CHEETOS Children Development Centres

A series of projects regarding poverty reduction strategies and integrating economic, social and environmental aspects of sustainable development, promotion of participatory approaches, capacity building studies and observance of disadvantaged groups in all these studies have been carried out by the GAP Administration. One of the most important studies conducted within this context is “GAP-Cheetos Children Development Centres Project.” The population of GAP Region is quite young and dynamic. 39% of the population in the region is composed of 0-14 age group children. This rate is 26.5% in all over Turkey (Turkish Statistical Institute). In 2013, for GAP it’s 36.7% and for Turkey it’s 24.6%. Since the number of children is high in South-eastern Anatolia Region, it results in insufficient education and services for children. The physical, mental, social and emotional developments of children occur the fastest during 0-6 age period and these developments influence later periods remarkably. This is why, it is necessary to create education opportunities for pre-school children apart from school age children. Even if the children in poor and uneducated families can keep going to school, since there is no proper environment where they can study their lessons and develop themselves, they cannot study enough and some of them start working in early age. Besides, they encounter such problems as poor infrastructures, having multi-children, poverty, gender inequality, lack of understanding child concept, lack of sports facilities, inadequate social and cultural activities, lack of educational materials, malnutrition, health and health knowledge problems, no access to IT, lack of playgrounds. So that major problems such as dropping out school, no school attendance, failure in school, child labour, violent crimes and drug addiction arise from these problems.

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