Turkey

My experiences of Adult Learning Festivals
I joined an adult education meeting in Slovenia. I want to tell my story shortly. I have a mental disabled daughter and I didn't know how to cope with her. One day, I saw SLS brochure and I contacted with them.I attended their seminars.I gained lots of educational experiences from them.I became very happy when Turkish project team choose me as a participant for Slovenia project meeting. I was very excited to abroad for the first time in my life. Slovenia is a wonderful country, it fascinated me. First day, we attended a short meeting with a Minister in Ljubljana.Later, we went to Zalec and joined the opening ceremony to give awards of adult education. Eventhough I didn't know English, I attended workshops at the hotel but to participate, to monitor carried out works was a great experiences for me.

I learned from my experiences
Especially, to visit established centre for disabled citizens impressed me very much. The most important thing I learned from these meetings, if you want to do a study about any issue, to include the elders of state in this study would be more useful. Then you will draw upon the more media attention and so that you can reach more adult individuals.

What will I do as a result of participating?
When I met Turkish project team and spoke with them about mental disabled children, I asked I wanted to reach other parents whose mental disabled children. My aims are to share their experiences and problems,to inform them about mental disability and how adults/parents can cope this education and to establish an association to share new knowledge combating this situation with all society. I wanted to use the media on this subject,firstly. Turkis project team tried to help me. We haven't reached a conclusion but it was importan to take a step. After Slovenia meeting, I installed a group on facebook.Nowaday, I have been loading information into this group and sharing the others.

Gülşah Yildiz, housewife, Turkey