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No arms, no name, no future
When Yüzay’s mother, Zahide, was pregnant, she knew something was wrong. “I could never feel her moving,” she remembers. But nothing prepared her for the first glimpse of her baby. “When Emine was born, we were so shocked – we didn’t give her a name for 40 days. It was our landlord who suggested the name Emine, rationalizing, ‘No baby should die without a name.’”
As Yüzay grew, she taught herself to do almost everything with her feet. She could make her bed in the morning, dress herself, clean – even knit – all by using her toes. “I use my feet just like you use your hands,” she says.
As she became more capable, her longing to learn intensified. When her older brothers came home from primary school, she’d sometimes ask to see their homework and, balancing a pencil between her toes, try to copy it.
One day, her younger sister Elif heard that free courses were starting for anyone in the neighborhood who couldn’t read or write. Despite her parents’ reservations, Yüzay signed up. The teachers welcomed her, reminding Yüzay to be grateful that she still had full use of her mind, if not her arms.
“When I came to the courses, I felt the same joy as a schoolgirl on the first day of class,” she says.
Starting CLE
Yüzay attended 10 hours of class a week for nine weeks. This basic course is meant for students without any reading or writing skills and uses the CLE method of instruction, which relates literacy to ordinary tasks. (Read the CLE fact sheet for more details.) People who finish the first 90-hour CLE class can also enroll in a 180-hour follow-up course to practice what they’ve learned. Yüzay completed both courses, amounting to a fifth-grade level of education.
Turkish Rotarians see illiteracy as a significant problem in their country and have started CLE programs in many districts. Clubs in District 2420 donate to a fund that supports literacy courses like Yüzay’s throughout Istanbul. According to Tufan Demirel, a member of the Rotary Club of Istanbul-Bostanci and coordinator of Yüzay’s CLE course, a 15-person class costs about US$300.
“It’s not easy to attract women to the classes because they often don’t understand what good it will do for them,” Demiril says. To encourage them to enroll, District 2420 and Turkey’s Ministry of National Education give away medicine, toothbrushes, and staple food items like potatoes and carrots.
As each class graduates, Rotary clubs in the district receive reports about the success of the program and are invited to attend certificate ceremonies.
After earning her certificate, Yüzay read every book she could find. “It was really difficult at first,” she says. “I still had to look up almost every word.”
But it’s getting easier. Inside her family’s apartment building, Yüzay opens a collection of world literature borrowed from a neighbor. She flips past short stories until she finds one she likes. As she begins reading it aloud, everyone grows quiet – even her five-year-old brother, Yusaf Alí, who’s been running in circles around the living room. Yüzay’s delicate voice captivates her family, and she reads without tripping over a word.
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