Education and Culture Magazine Interview
April 2004
Nazire Dedeman
Founder President of Umut Foundation
1. What do you aim with COSA project?
We are aiming to raise awareness of parents about individual disarmament and purify the children from toy guns phisically and mentally. One of the targets of our Foundations work is to end individual armament terror in which our society is for various reasons thorugh every kind of work that will enable to minimise the violence as much as posible. As you know social life requires collectivisim, therefore solving a problem will be possible through enabling the collectivisim.
2. What kind of connection is there between toy guns and individual armament?
The individual starts to learn basic life principles and conditions from early ages. As individuals who form the society start to learn violence from the very early ages and when we are adults, generally, we try to solve the conflicts with exercising violence. This is very important and fundemantal mistake. The gun that is given to a child as a toy causes in adulthood to be familiar with violence tools, gun, and knife. Toy gun is an important device for learning violence. The society approves the boys to play with the gun instead of dolls. Why? Because being a man is measured with the ability or inability to play with the gun. Wheeras, in adulthood being quarrelsome, aggresive or sulky is considered as the measure of manhood.
It is very obvious actually, if tell the dangers of toy gun we wil teach our children the fatality of the gun and its dangers. Therefore we will have raised children who have tendency towards peace and compromise.
3. Can we learn why and how you started to support Theatre Art?
Theatre Art who has been staging plays in primary schools sent us a file about their play called Can you play with us? whose lyrics were written by Aysel Gürel and Umut Foundation considered this project. This play of Theatre Art is an important work because it allows us to reach many children in Istanbul. It is very important to reach slums of Istanbul where violence is very intense in daily life. Families who live in the center of city already know how to raise a child properly or try to know. Yet, it is more important to reach unknowing parents who migrated to Istanbul from Anatolia and trying to exist in the chaos of the city.
We supported Theatre Art thinking that they can play an effective role for us o reach our aims. Our brochures, which we prepared, to inform both students and parents, are distributed in the schols where Theatre Art stages its plays. After the plays the forms, which contain the comments and observation of the teachers, are conveyed to us, through which we follow how successful we have been.
4. Is there any other cultur-art activity that you support within the scope of COSA?
Theatre Art is nowadays working hard. We of course consider projects like this. You can write here 28 September competitions organized by us. Are they not culture and art activity?
5. How long the cooperation between Theatre Art and Umut Foundation? Are you considering it for the forethcoming year?
Our cooperation has been going on for 3 months and it will continue until the end of this semestre, which means until June. We reached to 15,013 primary school children. We will decide after assesing the reports for next year. At the moment, we receive many demands for the play from outside and inside Istanbul. School administrators wish that this play, which deals with the concepts of child and violence, toy gun, is staged in their school.
For hopeful future...