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INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Canel Tunay – Project Coordinator

Marking International Women’s Day 2006, Turkish Cypriot education experts organised an educational project for primary school children entitled, “Introducing Gender Perspectives to Children Through Theatrical Plays.” As the title indicates, we chose to reach out to young children through simple performances that would be easily accessible to them, a methodology that allowed interactive engagement of the students to discuss the stereotyped gender roles portrayed by the performers. At the end of each performance our facilitator had a short discussion with the children and observed whether the aim of raising awareness about gender issues was being achieved, and whether the right messages had been communicated to the children.

We chose to raise the subject of gender as it is an issue which still requires much attention in Cyprus. A great number of children continue to be brought up with conventional gender perspectives and as observed by many experts, in years to come these children grow up projecting these stereotyped gender roles in their own lives and in their societies.

The play was performed on four separate occasions in March, including a performance for the Balıkesir Women’s Association, where we were also able to reach many women and families from local villages. Reaching over thirty primary schools in total, we felt that this initiative was a success for us. Not only did the experts and teachers observe the extremely high participation of students during discussion time with the facilitator, but we also had parents calling us and coming in to congratulate us for organising this project.

Many other schools and teachers who could not participate in the programme in this round asked if we are planning to continue with more performances in the coming months. Given the positive results after this initial effort, and the encouragement we have received, we certainly aim to continue on with this project for the new semester and maybe develop it even further.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank UNDP-ACT and its staff for providing us with support for this initiative.